


Feelie's Teen Wolf Morgue Files

by The Feels Whale (miscellea)



Series: Feelie's Morgue Files [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Read at Your Own Risk, WIP dump, none of these are categorically dead and may be revived at some point
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-01
Updated: 2014-04-25
Packaged: 2018-01-17 18:34:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 64,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1398268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miscellea/pseuds/The%20Feels%20Whale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a collection of fics where I've either written myself into a corner or have been Jossed with extreme prejudice to the point where I'm have a hard time picking the story back up. These are none of them betaed, but are things I like to re-read myself and still kind of want to share.</p><p>Expect magical realism, knotty politics (no pun intended), lots of Stiles POV, and a reasonable chance of obnoxious door-stop endings in your fic forecast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I Ain't Got No Crystal Ball

It’s not that the Hale siblings are _weird_ … except…

Yeah. Okay, nevermind. They are _totally_ weird, but Stiles can’t really throw stones considering the fact that he lives in an enormous glass castle of assorted personality defects and oddities.

It’s been roughly five years since Beacon Hills has had a Hale in residence, not since Laura returned for a brief visit back when the county tried to condemn the burnt out remnants of the old Hale House. That had been kind of nasty, although no one had all the details. Stiles knew more than most, but all he knew for sure was that it involved one of her relatives who had been in the hospital faking a catatonic state until he decided to escape one night in order to kill his niece because of reasons.

Bad idea as it turns out. Laura is five foot nothing and weighs one hundred and thirty pounds on a bad day, but no one can call her a victim.

No one can say it’s a pity what happened to Peter Hale afterwards either because he really, _really_ had it coming. Still, folks give Laura wide berth in the aftermath.

Stiles can’t really blame her for not sticking around. He’s actually really surprised she came back at all… much less that she brought her younger brother back with her.

Most folks don’t remember the Hales from before the fire at all, people being the way they are. Stiles does, but that’s because he’s had this platonic life-partnership going on with the library since an early age and Mrs. Hale was the only reference librarian who would have much of anything to do with Stiles.

You tend to remember people who are willing to have a serious discussion about War of the Worlds with a nine year old.

His dad had never really been able to figure out why Stiles had been so upset at the time of the fire, but then Stiles hadn’t really done a good job of explaining himself. His mom had understood, but… well. That was back when she’d first been diagnosed so she had other things on her mind. They all had.

Still, Stiles remembers Mrs. Hale and her cats-eye glasses with the sparkly beaded lanyard. He remembers the gold folding-frame photographs sitting on her desk and thinking that it had to be difficult to find a way of getting pictures of everyone in such a large family without sacrificing half of her available workspace.

This is all by way of an explanation why Stiles is the first and –for a while- _only_ person to make the drive up to the Hale property.

It’s not that the Hales lived very far outside of town back in the day although their house was pretty secluded and surrounded by a lot of private woodland that local developers have been actively slavering over for _years_. It _is_ a bit of a drive and it’s only made longer by the fact that the private road leading up to the house hasn’t been maintained in nearly eleven years.

“… or at least, not until now.” Stiles amends when he turns his Jeep off the main road and onto fresh gravel. “Guess they’re planning on staying.”

The old house is still a blackened shell when Stiles’ poor old clunker makes it to the end of the long drive, but there’s less of it. Part of the house has been carefully torn down and laid to rest in a nearby construction dumpster. There’s some evidence that a work crew has been through; tire tracks in the grass, a discarded hard hat, and a pair of Port-a-Johns located away from the battered silver RV parked in what used to be the backyard.

He’s lucky that first day because Laura is the one he encounters first, which is kind of a funny thing to say about a woman whose reputation is founded upon some pretty bloody mayhem.

Stiles can’t say with any honesty that he really remembers interacting with Laura or Derek at all when they were kids. For one thing, Laura is seven years older than him and her brother is only younger than her by ten months. (Irish twins, they’re called.) For another, both Laura and Derek were _way_ higher up on the social food chain than weedy little fourth graders. He vaguely remembers Laura having something of a cult following among the junior high boys, but there was so much distance between her and Stiles that he didn’t even really have the option of gazing upon her from afar. Derek didn’t have a following of any kind and all Stiles really remembers about him is the time he got kicked off the lacrosse team for possible steroid use, which no one had ever been able to prove.

Or _dis_ prove, which was the real problem small town gossip being what it is.

Come to think of it, it’s really a fucking miracle that either Hale ever set foot in California again.

Laura is lounging on what appears to be a picnic table with no benches when Stiles puts his Jeep into park. She doesn’t look up when he gets out, but she does tilt her Audrey Hepburn shades down when he’s a little closer in order to check out the Tupperware container under his arm. Her nose twitches, which is kind of weird –but everyone has their own facial tics.

“… cookies?” She asks at last, one dark wing-like brow arching upwards towards her hairline.

“Chocolate chip. My mom’s recipe.” Stiles holds out the container and Laura’s other eyebrow joins the first one, but she accepts the cookies all the same. It occurs to Stiles that she most likely has no idea who he is. “Sorry, Stiles Stilinski. You won’t remember me. I was like… sixteen last time you were in town and ten the time before that.”

“Stilinski.” Laura says it like she’s rolling it around on her tongue and then nods, having placed the name. She swings her long legs down from the table and crosses them with the kind of absent-minded sensuality that a lot of TV starlets like to try and ape, but will never grow into. Stiles feels the back of his neck go hot, which is impressive. He’s been mainly into dudes for the past few years, but apparently there are still some ladies out there aside from Lydia who can get him hot under the collar. Good to know. “You’re the Sheriff’s kid? Did he send you?”

“Nah, he says ‘hi’ though.” Stiles fumbles for his bag, abruptly remembering the whole reason for his visit. “Uh, actually I’m here to return something. Not the cookies. Um… here.” He pulls an old book out of his bag. It’s fragile, but he’s taken care of it over the years. First in honor of Mrs. Hale and then later because it deserved protection for its own sake. He holds it out to Laura. “Your mom lent this to me a few weeks before…well. _Before_.”

Laura’s eyes are wide as she stares at the worn hardback copy of Treasure Island that Stiles is holding out. Mainly because it’s in an acid-free archival box to protect it from dust and sun damage.

“It’s, uh, turns out it’s a little valuable.” He rattles on because that’s what he does in the face of awkward silences. “I mean, not CRAZY valuable. Not like some of the 1883 first editions. Those go for like 15K without breaking a sweat. This one is a 1911 printing, but the color plates are still in fantastic condition so you’re still looking at a thousand bucks, easy. Which. I know. Kind of insane that she loaned it out to a fourth grader, but in my defense I took _very_ good care of it and when I realized what it was then… uh…” He trails off as Laura takes the box from his grasp.

“I haven’t seen this in years.” She says softly, folding the box open to reveal the slightly faded cover depicting a cast of blood thirsty pirates. “I thought it was burned along with everything else.”

“S-sorry about that.” Stiles kind of wants to slap himself as he continues to stammer like he’s never spoken to a woman before in his life. “Dad didn’t want me bothering you the last time you were around and I could never find a way to ask what your forwarding address was without making it sound weird.”

“She lent this to you?” Laura glances up, her hazel-green eyes considering until she smiles. “I remember now. You’re that kid she used to share books with.”

“She talked about me?” Stiles blinks because he hadn’t really considered the possibility that Mrs. Hale even remembered who he was when he was out of sight.

“Yeah.” Laura smiles and closes the box over the book, hiding it away from sight. “Mostly to dad. I overheard her a few times though. She was impressed by your take on the Great Gatsby.”

Stiles thinks back and frowns. “I told her that the entire cast was made up of selfish jerks and buttheads.” He shrugs. “Not exactly a critical review.”

“Yet still valid and insightful for your age, is what she said.” She counters and hops down from the table. “I have to say, I’m surprised you came up here. Most everyone in town is waiting for me to kill someone else.”

That is… not inaccurate, but telling Laura that seems a bit cruel. “Give it some time. You’re just interesting right now, but something else will happen soon enough. You may have noticed, but Beacon Hills is kind of a freak show.” He doesn’t really mean it as a joke, but Laura laughs anyway.

“Yes.” She says and her eyes have this sort of droll twinkle to them. “I have noticed that.”

The visit sort of peters out after that and Stiles slinks back to his jeep before his brains liquefy and seep out his ears… more than they already have. Still; mission accomplished. The book is back where it belongs and no longer radiating guilt at him from his desk like a pocket-sized Jewish grandmother.

He counts the day as a net win.

 

* * *

 

Stiles’ doorbell rings three days later and when he opens it up he finds what has to be the world’s most belligerent underwear model standing on his front step.

He’s tall, taller than Stiles by a little bit even, with broad muscular shoulders and a leather jacket that is completely inappropriate for the season. Worse, it’s nine am and the guy’s already got the beginnings of a shadow beard clinging to his jawline. He has surprisingly shapely black brows that are drawn down in a scowl over piercing blue-green eyes and Stiles feels like he should be clutching his purse or something.

… then he notices the Tupperware container shoved under the guy’s arm.

“Oh! You’re _Derek_.” He exclaims like he’s brain-damaged or something, which might well be the case at this point. Between Derek and his sister, Stiles is running low on functional neurons.

“This is yours.” Derek growls. Actually. _Growls_. At Stiles. Which would be a lot less distressing if Stiles had known he even _had_ that particular kink before this very moment. He shoves the Tupperware into Stiles’ chest and turns to leave.

Stiles might have let him go if he hadn’t noticed that there was something in the container. “What is this?” He asks because his brain-to-mouth filter malfunctions badly when he’s off-kilter and vanishes _completely_ when he’s around hot people. _So_. This should be interesting.

Derek pauses. “Vension sausage. Laura made it.” He bites off the words and it occurs to Stiles that he might very well resent being sent out as Laura’s errand boy on a Tupperware exchange.

“Wow, thanks.” Stiles can’t remember if it’s deer season or not because hunting is really not his thing and he likes his limbs all in one place. “Tell Laura ‘thank you’ for me, could you do that?”

There’s a pause where Derek glares at him like he’s trying to find a hidden meaning to Stiles’ words before he nods once and then strides away towards the… _wow_. Towards the drop-dead sexy black Camaro illegally parked in front of Stiles’ building.

It occurs to Stiles that the Hale siblings are either going to make life difficult in Beacon Hills or damn entertaining. Possibly both.

 

* * *

 

BTW: the sausage is _awesome_.

 

* * *

 

Laura spots Stiles in Costco the following week and they end up going in on crate of laundry detergent together.

“How’s the house coming along?” He asks as he loads up the back of Laura’s truck like the true gentleman that he is. Laura finds this hilarious for some reason, but won’t say why.

“Slowly.” Laura sighs. “We’re trying to reclaim as much as we can, but there’s so much damage from the fire and weather. I should have done this sooner, but…” She shakes her head. “It’s been very emotional, especially for Derek. I think he’s taking it the hardest.”

“How can you tell?” Stiles has seen Derek a few more times since the Tupperware Incident, but only at a distance. Near as he can tell, Derek’s default expression is ‘annoyed’ no matter where he is or what he’s doing.

“Hush, you.” Laura whacks him on the shoulder and Stiles does a good job of stifling his yelp. For such a tiny thing, Laura can pack a whallop. “Derek has plenty of emotions. Mind you, most of them are varying flavors of irritation, but he still has them.” She sobers. “He misses the way things used to be and thinks repression is the emotionally healthy way to deal with grief.”

Stiles winces, reminded of his dad’s failed attempts at coping after the death of his mom. “He and my dad could start a club.” He says and hauls the cargo net over Laura’s purchases. “Make Derek unload it for you.” He tells Laura.

She pats him on the cheek. “You’re a good boy, Stiles.” She tells him.

“I hear that from all the girls.” Stiles replies and begins the daunting task of manhandling his own cart in the direction of the Jeep.

Laura might be watching him leave, but Stiles can’t really tell without looking backwards and making it painfully obvious that he’s doing so. Either way her truck is still parked when he pulls out of his parking spot. He considers stopping to make sure she hasn’t had a break down, but the truck starts before he’s made up his mind.

 

* * *

 

It keeps happening like that. Stiles will run into Laura or Laura will spot him while he’s out and they end up shooting the shit for a while. Less so on the rare occasions when he encounters Derek, but he’s taken stoicism to a whole new level so eventually Stiles just starts talking _at_ him instead of to without ever expecting much of a reply beyond the occasional grunt or manly shrug. Derek doesn’t seem to be avoiding him beyond the extent to which he avoids _everyone_ so maybe it’s working as a strategy.

If pressed, Stiles would say he’s friends with both of them… although he’s not entirely sure. Derek seems to tolerate him more than anything else and he can’t help but feel like Laura sees him as a very amusing pet. This is not the stuff of which epic friendships are made.

For instance, Stiles couldn’t really say what it is that Laura does for a living except that, whatever it is, it must pay well because she drives a brand new Chevy Silverado and has the most impressive collection of shoes that Stiles has ever _seen_ (and he’s seen the inside of Lydia Whittemore’s wardrobe.) Derek seems to spend most, if not all, his time up at the work site when he’s not running around doing Laura’s bidding so Stiles has to assume that he’s acting as the general contractor for the rebuild. Or maybe Laura is the contractor and Derek’s just hapless labor. It’s hard to tell.

Likewise, Stiles is pretty sure they know very little about him beyond who his dad is and the fact that he makes a damn good chocolate chip cookie.

Still, Stiles has had worse friends; Jackson Whittemore for example –although he’s probably more of a ‘frenemy’ if guys can have those.

Stiles persists in this belief until the Hales have been in town for three weeks and his doorbell rings one evening. He opens the door to find Laura on his front step.

… and she’s got Derek slumped against her side covered in blood.

“Stiles.” Laura says and doesn’t elaborate. She’s pale as a ghost, but doesn’t look half as bad as Derek who looks like he’s dying of some kind of romantic wasting disease set on fast-forward.

These are not people who have a wide range of options. Stiles clears a path.

“Put him on my bed.” He says instead of all the sane rational things he should have (‘I’ll call 911’ for example) especially when he sees the black veins twisting up from the… gunshot wound?

Stiles purses his lips. Granted, he doesn’t have a lot of medical education, but that looks a LOT like septicemia and if that’s the case then Derek may well lose his arm if not worse. Only …that’s a fresh bullet wound that’s bleeding bright, clean, and red. Blood poisoning shouldn’t have set in so quickly. “Keep him horizontal.”

Laura settles Derek in the bedroom while Stiles grabs his emergency kit and examines the hole in Derek’s arm, which is still bleeding sluggishly when he squats down by the bedside. He cleans it out with some hydrogen peroxide and plugs it up with gauze. When Laura isn’t looking, he drops an egg in a glass of clean water and puts it under the bed.

“The bullet seems to have passed through.” He says, after a minute and hands Laura a length of gauze. “Tie off his arm under the bicep. It’ll buy us a little time… but not much. He’s going to need a hospital _soon_.”

“No. Hospitals.” Derek grits out, glaring at Stiles like that’s going to change anything. Fortunately he submits readily enough when Laura hauls his jacket off and cinches off his arm. It’s a stop gap method at best and Stiles is developing a genuine terror of having to explain to his father why he didn’t call an ambulance right away.

“It’s a hospital or the _coroner_.” Stiles counters with the voice he uses on his dad when the Sheriff is whining about seeking medical assistance from some place other than Melissa McCall’s kitchen.

“No hospitals.” Laura says and Stiles turns on her with shock. Her color is a bit better now that her brother is settled, but her face is set in grim lines of determination. “I know how to fix this, but there’s something I need to get. Someone has to stay with him. Stiles… _please_.” It’s not quite a question, but it’s not an ironclad statement.

Stiles runs his tongue over bone dry lips and nods without really intending to. “Y-yeah… all right. Okay, fine. Just… _hurry_.”

“I will.” … and just like that, she’s gone.

“What is my life, I ask you?” Stiles mutters to himself and shakes himself. “You.” He points at Derek. “Stay here. I can at least get you comfortable.”

Derek favors him with a deadpan expression that approaches his normal level of bitchface and lies back against what used to be Stiles’ favorite bedspread. The black ropes continue to climb up his arm at an unnatural rate and Stiles scowls.

Whatever it is, that is _not_ a normal wound.

Derek hasn’t moved when Stiles gets back from the kitchen, but he growls when Stiles starts to unwrap his bandage. “What the hell are you doing?”

Stiles drops a damp washcloth over his eyes and tosses the bloody gauze over his shoulder. “Everything I can.” He says and sandwiches Derek’s forearm between two layers of a poultice.

“Is that…” Derek sniffs and his brow creases with confusion. “Bread, milk, and… comfrey root?”

“Plus some activated charcoal.” Stiles adds absently as he binds the sodden mass off with plastic wrap. The charcoal isn’t a traditional ingredient, but Stiles have never been what you would call a purist. “Hopefully that will draw out some of whatever it is that got into your bloodstream.”

“You…” Derek trails off and just stares at Stiles for a long minute before sagging back onto the bed. His eyes flicker shut and then snap back open when Stiles pokes him.

“No sleeping.” He says. “Not yet.”

Derek glares but says, “No sleeping.” His head sways to one side and he pulls it back with a visible effort of will. “ _Talk_.” He grits out. “I’m going to pass out otherwise.”

“What do you want me to talk about?” Stiles asks and sits on the edge of the bed for no reason he can really name, except it seems like the physical proximity is helping a little.

“Anything.” Derek scowls and cracks an eye. “Tell me why you live in this shit hole. You can afford better.”

Stiles blinks and carefully avoids looking around at his admittedly dinky apartment with its balding carpets and water-stained ceilings. The truth is that he _can_ afford better… now, anyway. That hasn’t always been the case.

“How do you know what I can afford?” He asks instead because talking is going to keep Derek more focused than listening to Stiles run off at the mouth.

“Because your dad won’t shut up about your last gallery show.”

That’s surprising. “You talk to my dad?”

“No.” Derek’s gaze skitters to the left, but it doesn’t quite feel like a lie. “He talks about it to anyone who can’t get away fast enough. Something about a big art buyer from LA.”

“Oh, yeah.” Stiles shrugs because in some ways he hasn’t quite accepted the fact that he’s a successful artist. He may never, which is probably one reason why he hasn’t upgraded his apartment. “He bought some pieces and we’re still negotiating over others. I’m actually more into historical preservation. The art thing just kind of happened.”

“Just _happened_?” There aren’t many people who can pack so much meaning into a few spare words, but Derek seems to be working it. Granted, most of what he conveys is skepticism and scorn but it’s a valid critique.

“Laugh it up, big guy. It did.” Stiles braces his elbows on his knees. “I mainly work in restoration; rare manuscripts and stuff like that. Eventually I started valuing books too. You know; telling people if they had something worth preserving or not. Usually the answer is ‘no’ and I get to field some second hand rage. Usually by dodging… anyway, long story short; at one point I accidently ODed on my ADHD meds and found myself alone in my apartment with an enormous pile of worthless books. So I started messing with them; folding the pages in weird ways, slicing shapes into the covers, stuff like that. Eventually I got the idea of mounting some out in public as guerilla art and people liked what they saw. My friend is an agent. She bullied me into putting on some shows then BOOM: art career. Now she bullies _other_ people into paying me obscene amounts of money and her lawyer husband has very poised breakdowns thinking about what will happen when one of my hipster former-clients recognizes the ‘special rare manuscript’ they abandoned with me and tries to sue.”

“Hah.” Derek is looking at the bare walls of Stiles’ bedroom saying without words what he thinks and it’s pretty much ‘what kind of artist lives in a home with bare walls’?

Stiles would reply ‘a pretty fucking depressed one’, but Derek didn’t actually ask so Stiles doesn’t have to answer. Instead he shuffles the conversation away from the treacherous waters of his dubious mental health and into the safer shallows of small talk because –as much as he wants to know what the hell happened tonight that it had to end with Derek dying of blood poisoning in Stiles’ bed- the goal is to keep Derek’s heart rate level. “Laura says you guys are having trouble with the house.”

“The house is fine.” Derek rolls his eyes, visibly annoyed with the topic. “When the crew can be bothered to show up.”

“So you _are_ overseeing the job.” Stiles holds his hands up to ward off Derek’s glare.

“No, I’m not.” Derek looks a little less consumptive so either the poultice, the egg, the irritation, or the conversation is helping. He scowls and lets his head loll to one side. “I’m not _supposed_ to be, but the contractor hasn’t shown up on the work site since he found out he’s working for Laura so I have to coordinate the demolition and sub-contractors.”

“Hmmm.” There isn’t a lot to say to that. Stiles is well familiar with the way a small town can close ranks against perceived outsiders. The Hales might be an old family, but Laura and Derek have been gone a _long_ time. “I have some friends in the business. I’ll give you their number when you’re feeling better.” He says and it’s kind of a rash promise. Danny’s technically an architect, but he’s a big name among the locals. He’ll know who to talk to and Scott still does some part-time construction work on the weekends to help pay down his student loans from vet school.

“You’re optimistic.” Derek replies and does not look at his arm, which is looking steadily worse. He closes his eyes and says, “Keep talking.”

So Stiles talks. He talks about everything and nothing. He talks about his dad’s blood pressure. He talks about the distressing noise his Jeep makes when he turns a sharp corner. He talks about his last show, which was probably the most stressful night of his life (until now anyway) and the inherent futility of trying to defend one’s work against entitled art fags who live the stereotype like someone wrote a manual and dismiss your work as ‘arts and crafts’ to your face. He talks and talks and talks as the minutes slide by and turn into hours. He talks like it’ll bring the color back into Derek’s face or banish the livid maroon rings around his eyes and maybe if he talks enough then Laura won’t come back to a cooling corpse in Stiles’ bed.

Oh God, Derek is going to die _in Stiles’ bed_ and that is just… nothing he is even remotely capable of handling.

Halfway through what Stiles feels has got to be a riveting recounting of the last two seasons of Jersey Shore, Derek starts trying to push himself upright and Stiles has to physically wrestle him back down… which turns out to be a really BAD idea.

“Aw _man_ , that’s just…” The urge to sympathy gag is strong, but not insurmountable even in the face of whatever black sludge it is that Derek’s coughing up into Stiles’ lap. He grabs the wastebasket from under his night stand and holds it up. “Go on, big guy. Get it all out.”

There’s something both awful and intimate about holding someone as they puke up their insides and Stiles lets his hand settle against the back of Derek’s neck in an attempt to either give comfort or help him aim towards the basket. Later, Stiles won’t even be able to remember.

Sometime like a static shock arcs between them and Derek jerks under his hands. On the bright side, whatever it was seems to have settled his stomach because he stops throwing up.

“Okay, back on your back.” Stiles tries to ignore the way Derek’s staring at him with pale blue eyes (were they always that blue?) the size of dinner plates. “…what?”

“ _You_ …” He starts to say something, but the door bangs open to admit a breathless and flushed Laura.

“I got it.” She’s got a handful of something that looks an awful lot like bullet and her jacket is honest-to-god _smoking_ in places, but she’s smiling with triumph when she asks, “I don’t suppose you’ve got a lighter handy?”

“I… do, actually.” Stiles fumbles in his pocket for the lousy zippo that has never left his side, not even when he’s tried to replace it multiple times with better metal ones that inevitably go missing within a day. It’s neon pink transparent plastic and very nearly eight years old. When Laura flicks it to life it obliges her with a jet blue flame that’s an inch and a half long.

Stiles is impressed. Normally it doesn’t like strangers.

“Wow.” Laura clicks it off. “Can you grab me a cool damp towel?”

“S-sure…” He doesn’t move. He can’t help it. His eyes are flicking between the zippo in Laura’s hand and the pallid man in his bed. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Laura, but there are several things going on here that in combination are making him very _nervous_.

“Stiles, it’s going to be okay.” Laura grips his shoulder and meets his eyes. “I am going to _make_ this be okay. Trust me.”

What do you say to that?

“All right.” Stiles goes for the towel and is almost back into the room when he catches a whiff of acrid smoke and Derek all but _screams_ through his clenched teeth. He’s writhing, pinned under Laura’s weight, and …the black veins in his arm are receding. He thrashes, but it’s less desperate now; less pained.

“ _Shhh_ , it’s okay.” Laura croons to him over and over again. “It’s okay. You’re going to be all right.” When Derek finally goes limp (passes out, actually, Stiles is pretty sure) she holds out a hand and says. “Towel.”

Stiles retreats, pausing only to make sure Derek is actually still breathing, and gives them a little privacy.

They emerge from his bedroom some twenty minutes later. Derek is walking under his own power, but he still looks like death warmed over.

“You can stay.” Stiles offers because he isn’t sure he wants to send either of these people back out into the world that did this to them. “I’ve got space.”

“No, but thank you.” Laura presses a kiss against his temple and jumps slightly when Derek … did he just _growl_? She looks at her brother with one ebon eyebrow raised and he looks contrite. Sort of.

“We’ll be fine. It’s better if you’re not involved.” Derek grumbles and he’s looking everywhere in the room except at Stiles. That’s –okay, it’s pretty fucking insulting considering how long Stiles spent sitting with him. _However_. Stiles is also pretty sure he’d have trouble meeting the eye of anyone he vomited black tar all over so maybe it’s somewhat understandable.

“That ship’s probably already sailed.” Stiles points out and shrugs. “…but I won’t force you. Just. Come back if you need to. Either of you. Both of you.” He looks back and forth between Derek and Laura. Derek’s staring at the weird orange stain creeping down the wall above the futon and Laura is looking at Stiles like he’s a puzzle she only just realized needs solving.

Good luck to her, if that’s the case. If Stiles is like a puzzle then he’s one with all the edge pieces missing and bits of _other_ puzzles mixed in. Better, braver people than her have tried to piece him together and they all gave up. It says something good about her that she looks willing to make the effort though.

“We will.” She promises, but doesn’t touch him again.

The Hales leave, filing out the door towards a car that Stiles doesn’t recognize and isn’t Derek’s Camaro or Laura’s Silverado. He really hopes it isn’t stolen, but isn’t holding out hope. He deliberately neglects to look at the license plate as they drive off just in case.

Once he’s sure they’re gone and not coming back only _then_ does he retrieve the egg from underneath his bed. He wishes at once that he hadn’t.

The eggshell has turned a smooth and shiny black like obsidian and the water around it has acquired a faint violet tint. He tips the egg out onto a paper plate because there is no way in hell he’s ever going to eat off anything that egg has touched. Then puts on gloves and cracks the egg smartly in the center of the plate.

A fetid smell like rotting-meat-meets-swamp-gas greets his nose and the yolk inside has split into three greenish-yellow orbs. The white’s gone thick, opaque, and faintly red. Stiles swirls the contents, reading the symptoms and a few portents that snuck their way in along with Derek’s illness. Finally he leans back and swears.

He bangs his head against the side of the fridge, which makes a wonderfully cathartic hollow _thunk_ sound with each repetition.

Scott picks up on the third ring with a sleepy “H’llo?”

“Fucking _werewolves_.” Stiles whines into the receiver.

“Wait…” Sheets rustle on Scott’s end and his voice takes on an incredulous note. “ _Again_?”

 

* * *

 

There are apartment listings crammed into his box when Stiles checks his mail the next morning.

“Five points to Gryffindor for good intentions.” Stiles mutters as he tries (unsuccessfully) to clear the little booklets out of the little door slot and only manages to tear most of them in half. “Minus twenty for _lousy execution_.”

Later he finds himself and stuck staring at the spot under his sink where the linoleum is peeling away from the wall and curling in on itself to reveal the dull brown and mildew-streaked subflooring.

Derek was right. This place is a shithole and now _he can’t stop noticing it_.

 

* * *

 

He isn’t expecting to see Derek again so soon, but the bastard is nothing if not contrary so of course Stiles runs into him the next time he goes to pick up a check from his gallery.

 _Literally_.

Stiles is juggling two binders, a folio, and a travel mug of coffee so he’s not really paying attention to where he’s going. The customers usually recognize him from his photo plastered on the wall and give him room either out of respect or because they’ve heard tell of what happened to the last guy who crept up on Stiles when he wasn’t paying attention.

It’s remarkably similar to what happens to Derek Hale only _Derek_ snatches the mug out of midair before it can spill a single drop, unlike the other guy who got drenched in screaming hot coffee and ended up in the burn ward with a scalded face.

“ _Jesus Christ_ , Hale, don’t sneak up on me like that!” Stiles yelps, trying desperately and perhaps futilely to keep his binders from slipping out of his arms and spilling the contents of his folio all over creation. The gallery attendant is fussing at his elbow making it worse because ADD means Stiles is trying to split his attention between re-balancing his stuff, apologizing to Derek, and trying to chase the kid off and reassure him in the same breath.

Derek reaches out and grabs the folio from off the top of the pile leaving Stiles with the binders, which aren’t going to actually spill unless the D rings inside break.

Once he’s got a hold on his life again (both figuratively and literally) and shooed the attendant off, he attempts to collect his folio and coffee back from Derek. Derek declines to relinquish either, possibly out of a legitimate fear that he’ll end up wearing one or both of them. Stiles …cannot blame him. He tries though.

“Look, unless you want to follow me around carrying my coffee for me you’re going to have to give it back sooner or later.” Stiles points out as Derek follows him out of the gallery. He very pointedly doesn’t think about what Derek was doing in there or what he thought of Stiles’ work. Constructive criticism is all very well and good, but Stiles’ is full up on it after that damn show. He doesn’t think Derek falls into the same category as the art collectors in from New York and LA, but his self-esteem is still smarting from the experience. Unlike _real_ artists, he hasn’t had the opportunity to develop a thick skin when it comes to his creative endeavors.

“Maybe.” Derek allows with his customary deadpan expression; the one that makes it seem like the world is being _very_ tiresome on a constant basis and he’s resigned himself to just putting up with it.

“Your ‘maybe’ sounds like someone else’s ‘no’.” Stiles observes.

“Remarkable.” Derek holds the door open for him and follows him out onto the street. “Where are you going?”

Well, originally Stiles was planning on going home but he has this feeling that Derek would follow him there and he kind of isn’t in the mood to watch a guest stare at the various mystery stains seeping through his wallpaper. “I was going to do some reading in the park.” He lies and then kicks himself when Derek cocks an eyebrow at him, clearly having heard his breathing hitch or his heartbeat flutter or how the fuck ever it is that werewolves know when someone is lying. He sighs and tries again. “I was going to go home, but now I don’t want to have to watch you judge my crappy apartment.”

“It’s not crappy.” Derek shrugs and immediately undercuts the backhanded compliment by saying, “It’s a health hazard.”

“Oh, gee, thanks.” Stiles sighs. “Speaking of, I got your little presents.”

“Were they helpful?” Derek’s positively _loquacious_ today. Stiles wonders if this is a side effect of saving his life: it makes him feel like he needs to make conversation.

“Not really. I had to use a pair of pliers to get them out of the mail slot. None of them survived the attempt.” Stiles says repressively.

Derek shrugs. “I can get others.”

Repression is clearly not working.

“I don’t need a new apartment.” Stiles silently dares Derek to find the lie in his words.

“You have black mold in the walls and cockroaches. I could smell it from the porch the first time I visited.”

Stiles’ skin immediately starts to crawl, but he bites down on it out of stubborn pride because he’s pretty sure Derek’s been living in worse over at the work site and has no right to point fingers. “I do not have cockroaches.” He says instead and he doesn’t. He has not seen a _single one._

“They’re in the walls.” Derek doesn’t say how he knows, but it occurs to Stiles that he can probably _hear_ them. Oh _god_. Why haven’t Scott or Danny said anything? Are they trying to be polite? Jesus.

“You know, I don’t actually _have_ pigtails.” Stiles bites out. “You can stop pulling them now.”

It occurs to him ten seconds too late that that was probably not the best metaphor he could have chosen. He’s seen men who look more heterosexual than Derek, but not many what with the muscles and the scruff and the slavish devotion to James Dean as a fashion role model.

…but…but counter to all logic and reason, Derek’s mouth curves in what can only be described as a sardonic _smirk_. Implying that he was indeed pulling Stiles’ nonexistent pigtails and doesn’t mind being called on it … and… Stiles has absolutely _no idea_ what to do with that.

Either he chooses to ignore the sound of every brain cell in Stiles’ head simultaneously exploding or Derek is just used to getting that kind of reaction when he obliquely hits on someone. He takes an experimental sip from Stiles’ thermos and makes a face before dumping it out into the gutter.

If Stiles weren’t so busy trying to figure out if there’s actual smoke seeping out of his ears, he’d have made Derek _eat_ that thermos. Greater men have _died_ for lesser sins than that.

“You…” Stiles glares and pretends like his heart isn’t beating a rapid tattoo against the interior of his ribcage. “…you’re buying me new.”

“Over there.” Derek jerks his chin in the direction of the Daily Grind, which is half a block north of Stiles’ gallery and it finally, _finally_ occurs to him that this might have been Derek’s plan all along.


	2. That One Where Kate Argent Really Was a Serial Killer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles and Allison have a small project they work on together. Allison doesn’t talk about it to her dad or to Scott. Stiles doesn’t talk to anyone about it except Allison. It’s sort of their thing. It’s not a happy or healthy thing, if you think about it, but it’s a necessary thing.
> 
> It’s a closure sort of thing and not just for them.
> 
> You see, Kate Argent was a serial killer.

Stiles and Allison have a small project they work on together. Allison doesn’t talk about it to her dad or to Scott. Stiles doesn’t talk to anyone about it except Allison. It’s sort of their thing. It’s not a happy or healthy thing, if you think about it, but it’s a necessary thing.

It’s a closure sort of thing and not just for them.

You see, Kate Argent was a serial killer.

Stiles is the one who realizes it first. He’s slumped in front of an episode of CSI:Where-the-Hell-ever and it’s about a serial arsonist no one’s ever been able to catch because they’ve been hunting with the wrong profile. He’s tuned-in and tuned-out at the same time because his body is like 90% bruises at the time, which makes him think about the time he spent in the Argent’s basement in bad bitter ways so he has his brain resolutely switched off.

That’s how the thought gets through. Normally Stiles has a protective barrier of mental white noise between him and all the connections he’d rather not make, all the little truths his subconscious likes to cobble together because he clearly doesn’t have enough nightmare material in his life. Today, however, there’s nothing to stop the twin thoughts of ‘Arsonist’ and ‘Serial Killer’ from drifting together and _sticking_.

He sits up with a hoarse, “Oh, fuck me!” when the thought coalesces. Then he’s scrambling for Wikipedia and ordering a copy of DSM IV from the library. He orders some more books on abnormal psychology and buys trial memberships to some online psychiatric databases because he’s stumbled across some promising abstracts and wants to read the full papers.

His dad drifts by at one point and tries to pull him out of the research fugue state, but to no avail. Actually, and this is why Stiles’ dad is the best dad bar none, he reads the spines of the books Stiles is reading and drops off some of his old reference material from Academy. Afterwards he shows up with sandwiches at appointed mealtimes.

(Stiles would feel guilty because his dad clearly thinks Stiles has found a passion for criminology, but he sort of _has_. It’s just a very targeted passion right now.)

A serial killer can be defined as a killer who has killed two or more people with a cool-off in-between murders. Their motivation is psychological and often psychosexual gratification. There can be similarities between preferred victims and methods of killing, but not always.

So, yes, by the barest definition, Kate was a serial killer but so is the rest of Allison’s family. Cheering thought, yeah? But that’s not what Stiles is after.

There’s a thought fluttering in his head; huge, horrible, and too nauseating to face head on. It’s a dragon of a thought and its shadow has engulfed his every waking moment.

_What if there were more fires?_

Stiles corners Allison after school one day. It’s the first time they’ve really spoken to one another since _that_ night.

Allison hasn’t been looking so great and doesn’t talk to much of anyone. It’s been killing Scott, but he’s kept his distance as per her request –although sometimes he leaves flowers stuck into the vents on her locker. There’s no telling whether the flowers help or not, but it’s something.

“I need your help.” The words tumble out of him like the first bits of gravel heralding the coming avalanche.

“Sure.” She says with a wan pinched expression that says better than words; ‘more werewolf stuff?’

“It’s about Kate.” He’s learned not to say ‘your aunt’ anymore. Allison’s eyes turn dark and stormy when someone makes that mistake. She doesn’t say or do anything, but Stiles thinks maybe there are things even Allison won’t forgive. Whether it’s the murder or the lies, he can’t say.

“We should talk at my house then.” She holds up her keys. “I’ll drive.”

Stiles has some reservations about going to the Argent compound alone with no escape route, but to be honest his Jeep’s been making this clunking noise ever since he rammed it into Jackson mid-evolution. There’s a good chance it wouldn’t get all the way to Allison’s house anyway, much less away from it. Plus, there’re records that the Argents must keep that he needs access to if he’s going to prove or disprove his theory.

Chris Argent isn’t home when they arrive and that’s for the best. Allison turns pale as morning mist when Stiles explains his idea and there might be some tears. There might also be some very ladylike wall-punching. Stiles is sworn to secrecy about that last part though, but he’s an old hand at patching walls and it gives him something to do while Allison roots around in the records room.

Between the two of them, they’re able to piece together a road map of Kate Argent’s movements for the past five years. Stiles digitizes the map and starts using it to cross reference suspicious fires in any area where Kate spent more than a week. He marks Kate’s movements with a thick red line and the fires with yellow dots.

“ _Sweet Jesus_.” Allison swears when he’s only halfway done. “This can’t all be her.”

“I don’t think it is.” Stiles says is his dispassionate ‘ _I’m thinking_ ’ voice that creeps everyone except Allison and Derek out. “Some of them will be accidents, some of them may be insurance fraud or whatever, some of them may be actual _crimes_ , but… there’s always at least one.”

“Yeah.” Allison’s fingers drift over Stiles’ computer screen and her voice is grim. “There is.”

Stiles has to limit the variables somehow so he restricts the third layer of his map to fires with deaths where the victims were whole families, preferably extended ones. He marks them in green. That winnows down the locations on his map, but the overlap is still gut-wrenching and Allison’s eyes mist up when she has to look at it for too long.

“I think I may need to go to some of these places.” He says one afternoon out of the blue. It’s been simmering away in the back of his mind for a few weeks now, but has only just recently come together into a thought he can express in words.

Stiles suspects that there’s going to be some ritualistic elements the fires that the local police either kept hidden from the media or just plain didn’t notice, but either way he’s not going to find that sort of thing on Google. Reporting on the victims has been minimal. Stiles has found some obituaries, but not much else. Most of the fires have happened in smaller isolated communities whose local newspapers don’t have much in the way of an online presence or who don’t have a local paper at _all_.

“I can’t go with you.” Allison says even as she starts digging through the footlocker at the end of her bed. It’s a weapons locker, it turns out. “My family is too well known and Gr… Gerard circulated my picture to all the hirelings and extended family outposts when I ‘took over’. That has to have leaked by now. Here.” She loads him down with a telescoping baton, three different kinds of mace, and a taser. “I’ll teach you how to use it all.” She promises him.

This is why Allison will always be Stiles’ secret favorite although sometimes Erica dogs her heels. There’s never any ‘Stiles you can’t do this’ or ‘It’s too dangerous’ with her, just straight up ‘You need to be ready and this is how.’

Even Derek starts getting twitchy about how much time Stiles spends with Allison after that, but really he does need the training if things keep going the way they have been. His dad finds the taser pretty early on, but doesn’t say anything about it. He does, however, start dragging Stiles to the shooting range with him on Sunday mornings again after that. That’s a family bonding thing Stiles hasn’t had to suffer through since he was fourteen with undiagnosed ADHD and accidentally shot the lights out. It’s better now and Stiles has a reason to knuckle down this time.

Stiles sucks ass with bows. Crossbow, compound bow, recurve; it doesn’t matter. He _sucks_. However he does okay with pistols. He’s better with a rifle and becomes downright badass with it once Allison shares some of her breathing and focus exercises. His dad is just glad they have something in common again.

“If you become a hunter…” Derek tells him during a pack meeting, which has become a thing.“…they will never find all the parts of your body.”

“Relax, Sourwolf, I’m not hunting _werewolves_.” Stiles tells him and leaves it at that.

Stiles takes his first road trip a few weeks before school starts. The nearest dot on his map is six hours away and the trail is five years cold, but Kate spent eight months there after the Hale fire. It’s not a green dot, but there are a _lot_ of yellow ones there.

There’s also a wolf pack, but Stiles doesn’t know that until he comes back to his motel room from dinner and finds a red-eyed stranger sitting on his bed.

“I’m surprised Hale feels the need to send a spy into my territory.” She says and someone pushes Stiles into the room from behind.

“I’m not a spy.” Stiles says. “Ignore the part where that’s what every spy ever has said upon getting caught, yeah?”

The woman snorts, but it’s more amusement than disbelief. Stiles has learned to gauge werewolf temperaments in the past few years out of necessity and he’s had exposure to more Alphas than he’d really like. There are Alphas who’d break his legs just to send a message to Derek, but she isn’t one of them he thinks.

“A lot of toys you’ve got here for an ordinary tourist.” She tips his shaving kit over and lets his little arsenal spill out onto the bed.

“I’m not a tourist either.” He says and keeps his hands out where they’re nice and visible, no matter how much he wants to shove them into his pockets.

“Well then, Mr. ‘I’m not a tourist’, what brings you to my territory?” The woman asks. “If you’re not spying for Hale and you’re not here to take in the sights then there can’t be much to keep you entertained.”

“I’m tracking the movements of a hunter who spent some time here about five years ago.” Stiles says because he’s got no patience for verbal tap-dancing and he’s never met a werewolf who does either. “She’s the one who burned out the Hale pack. You had a lot of unexplained fires around that time.”

A curious stillness goes over the Alpha. “I see.” She says calmly. “And this hunter’s name?”

“Kate Argent.” He’s not prepared for the growl from behind him and ends up scrambling for the other side of the room. The Alpha catches him by the shoulder and he braces himself for a mauling, but she just helps him right himself.

“We knew of Kate Argent. She tried to flush us out for months, but we live far outside of town. She was never able to pick up our trail.” She says, quelling her beta with a _look_. “We were never able to connect her to the fires.”

“So she didn’t get any of your pack?” Stiles thinks back to the fires he knows about. There were surprisingly few deaths in this area, but a _lot_ of burned houses.

“There were fires that year, but not any of our properties.” The Alpha is scowling though. “All the targets were humans; loners, for the most part, or families who didn’t socialize much.”

So potential werewolves then.

Stiles squeezes his eyes shut as the image comes clear. “Right. Awesome.” He says and doesn’t mean it. There’s a miniature Agent Hotchner in the back of his head making dry comments about ‘rapid acceleration’, but he’s not sure it is actually. He asks more questions and gets a good picture of how Kate infiltrated the community and got around.

Matilda Beaumont is actually a really nice lady, especially for an Alpha. Every Alpha Stiles has met has had this constant all-consuming need to prove their badassery at all time. Matilda’s not like that. She’s a calm undercurrent in the lake of her pack. She doesn’t have to be in your face to be in charge. Stiles desperately wants her to set up an on-line degree program or something so he can force Derek to take it.

The Beaumont pack takes him in for the rest of his visit and there’s someone with him at all times when he’s digging through the local newspaper’s public archives. He earns his keep by clearing up a pixie problem they’ve got with some private pack woodlands. The pixies have always been there, but they used to keep to the border along the edge of the property until someone illegally dumped a load of construction trash too close to their nest. Here’s a hint; fairies don’t like asbestos any more than they like cold iron. He gets a kiss on the cheek from a grizzled little old woman with hands like tree roots who fits in the palm of his hand and Matilda sends him home with two coolers full of venison.

“One is for you. The other is for your Alpha as a tribute.” She says as she programs her cell number into his phone. “The phone number is for you alone, but Hale may request a meeting through you.”

“There’s still a pack in Montego? No one’s heard from them in twenty years.” Derek says when Stiles delivers the tribute and he hums in approval as he sorts through the vacuum packed cuts of meat. There seems to be a lot of organs in there and Derek seems particularly happy to see a six pack of livers. Stiles doesn’t want to know.

“Good job.” He says it with his back turned as Stiles is leaving after they’ve said their ‘see you when I see yous’. “You handled that well.”

Stiles isn’t sure what to make of the persistent little smile that clings to his mouth the whole way home, but it feels good in a way things haven’t in a while.

He compares notes with Allison after school, but it’s not enough data for them to draw any firm conclusions. She does however, take the bit about Kate using random fires to flush out her prey to her dad. Kate was a role model amongst the hunter community in the worst way and this is not a tactic that should be condoned. There were surprisingly few deaths, but that owed more to luck than anything else.

It’s not Stiles first road trip nor is it his last, but now he knows to contact Derek or Matilda for an introduction to the packs of any area he passes through. He starts bringing steaks or beer with him as tribute for whatever pack is hosting him and he helps out with supernatural problems wherever he can.

Sometimes he ends up somewhere with no wolves at all. Sometimes it’s because he’s walking in the wake of one of Kate’s successes and sometimes he’s somewhere where there were never any wolves to begin with. One such time he ends up having to put down a little proto-coven of preteen witches who somehow got their hands on a freaking monkey’s paw and never read the short story. That’s ugly and he’s not actually able to save anyone, but by the time it’s over no one even remembers the girls existed at all.

He starts carrying a general tool-kit of mountain ash, purified salt, holy water, and wolfsbane just in case. He collects more phone numbers, but isn’t allowed to share any of them not even when he starts getting calls from regional Alphas wanting to talk to other Alphas.

“You guys know I’m not a supernatural switchboard, right?” Stiles asks Matilda one evening when she’s calling for Derek because of reasons.

“Oh please, we’re all on the same network so it’s not like it’ll show up on your bill.” He can almost see her waving off his concerns.

“Yeah, but your _numbers_ show up on my dad’s bill and he does work law enforcement…” He lets the statement trail off pointedly.

“Hmm, you’re not wrong.” Matilda sounds thoughtful. “I will discuss this with Hale. Please conference us together now.”

Two weeks later Derek shows up with the latest droid and drags Stiles to the Verizon store to set up a separate line. The bill goes to Stiles, but it’s Derek’s money paying it for it. So now Stiles has a business phone that he can never ever let his dad find because there’s a growing segment of Beacon Hills who already thinks he’s a drug dealer. He doesn’t need to give his dad probable cause to search his bedroom for dried plant matter with a misleading appearance. Dried verbena is fucking _deceptive_ looking.

Although, seriously, he’s siccing Boyd and Isaac on the next stoner who pulls him aside and subjects him to painfully obvious hints that he’d totally be willing to buy if Stiles has something to sell.

“ _Look_ at you.” Allison tells him one day, when they’ve been at this for going on two years. He’s sitting crosslegged on the floor in her basement.

Mr. Argent keeps cautiously inviting him to stay for dinner, possibly in the vain hope that they’re dating and it means an end to Scott sneaking in through Allison’s bedroom window, but Stiles keeps a handy supply of reasons to politely decline on reserve. He’s gotten good at the whole ‘polite turn down’ thing after dealing with surly territorial Alphas who think he’s a hunter spy in clever disguise.

Stiles glances up from where he’s been modding a taser to better deal with stuff along the lines of _fucking trolls_ (and not the kind on the internet either) under Allison’s careful guidance. He looks back down in confusion at what little of himself he can see.

It’s not a very impressive sight. He’s picked up a little more muscle, but he still runs closer to weedy when compared to Derek, Boyd, and even freaking _Scott_ these days. He’s got a burn scar across one forearm and a tattoo looping around the other that you can only see in the light of a crescent moon. The fairy kiss on his cheek turned into yet another mole, but seems to make it hard for certain supernatural nasties to touch him. He’s still dressed in baggy jeans and slob flannel, but he’s got a slob haircut to go with it these days. Lydia made him get it and it looks okay when he actually uses the styling product she gave him, but flops into his eyes otherwise.

“You’re just growing up well, that’s all.” Allison tells him with a smile and he realizes, not for the first time, that she became his other best friend at some point. “Now, don’t let those wires make contact with each other.”

Stiles takes his last trip during the summer before college. It’s partially funded by various packs around the country who have problems that need solving and who are willing to pay for the gas and Cheetos it’ll take to get him there. He uses the opportunity to cross the last few green dots off his map.

The data still needs to be compiled and looked at all together, but Kate’s pattern looks pretty consistent. She’d roll into town shortly after a local teacher took a leave of absence (sometimes those teachers were never seen again, sometimes they just suffered tragic accidents that left them scarred for life afterwards) and set up housekeeping in a dingy apartment no one can ever actually remember seeing her staying at. From there there’s a collection of fires; possibly as a lead up to the main event or maybe it was just how she kept herself amused. Then there’s either a bonfire or Kate Argent gets run out of town for reasons left unexplained. At first he thinks it’s because the local werepacks were pulling strings behind the scene, but then he finds two dud communities were there were never any werewolves for Kate to find in the first place and she follows the same pattern. No big fire, but she left both towns under a cloud of bad sentiment.

It’s in the second dud town that Stiles meets Carl. Carl works at a diner at the edge of his hometown, which is a quiet burgh that serves Cincinnati as a bedroom community.

The diner is one of those retro-kitsch places where you can see into the kitchen a little and Stiles has been killing time ogling the cook’s arms while he waits for his curly fries because _damn_ that boy needs a license for those guns. He can’t see the guy’s face, but his shoulder-to-hip ratio is _off the hook_.

(Look, you can only exclusively hang around werewolves who are all _devastatingly_ attractive and whose sexualities can be described as ‘omni’ at best and ‘fluid’ at worst before it starts rubbing off.)

To his surprise, the guy comes out during his break and sits down at Stiles’ booth. At first he thinks he’s managed to attract a hook-up, but there’s a wrinkle in-between his visitor’s eyebrows that says not.

“I heard you’ve been asking around about Miss Kate.” Carl says and Stiles has his first big break. In retrospect, he really could have done without it.

They arrange to meet up once Carl’s off work because Stiles is not the kind of douche who’s going to make a guy give up his lunch hour. Carl’s got a little trailer of his own even though he isn’t much older than Stiles.

“I was a few months away from being an adult when the fire happened.” Carl explains with this hollow look in his eye. “The judge sped things up for me a little so I wouldn’t end up in the foster system. I used some of the insurance money to buy it. I do okay.”

“Would this be the fire where your mom and dad died?” Stiles has learned to keep his voice gentle and non-judgmental. He’s come across a few of the orphans that Kate made, but Carl’s the oldest one so far. He wasn’t able to speak directly to any of the others, but some of the Alphas he’s worked with were able to set up supervised conference calls. There’s something so brittle about Carl though that Stiles automatically handles him with the same kid gloves he uses on the five and ten year olds he’s had to interview.

“Yeah, my brother and sister too.” Carl pours him a glass of water and they sit on his ratty old Target futon. “Miss Kate taught algebra when I was in high school.” He runs the tip of his tongue over dry lips and there’s something about the gesture that pulls at the back of Stiles’ mind like a child tugging at his sleeve. “We were, uh, _involved_.”

Stiles does the math. “You would have been…”

“Yeah.” Carl’s laugh is kind of dry and mirthless. “I was fourteen.”

_Wow_.

“I don’t suppose you have any pictures of you back then?” Stiles asks although he couldn’t really say why.

“I’ve got an old yearbook. Will that do?” Carl fetches it from a box in the bottom of his closet and Stiles uses his fancy work phone to take a picture. At fourteen Carl is all gangly limbs and ears that stick out with a great big goofy grin that’s nowhere in evidence now, but there’s the promise of something more lurking in him and you can see it even in the photo. “That picture was taken at the beginning of the year. I had a growth spurt before Miss Kate transferred in and I’d started filling out a little.”

Stiles writes it all down. Carl knows a lot about the mysterious fires that happened that year for obvious reasons and he has information Stiles wasn’t able to find anywhere else.

“Does any of this help you?” He asks as Stiles pages through books full of newspaper clippings.

“It’s massively helpful.” Stiles promises him.

“… so, can I ask why you’re looking for her?” Carl asks and it’s something Stiles has been waiting for. “The judge told me they suspected her of setting the one that… well. You know. It happened right after my mom found out about her and me and she lost her job. No one was able to find her though and it turned out the information she gave the school was fake.”

“I’m not looking for her, actually.” Stiles tells him. “She’s, uh… she died. There was a fire in my hometown about nine years back and it was a lot like yours. She was never connected to the crime and she ended up coming back. One of the survivors -this guy who’d been in a coma for most of that time- ended up killing her.”

“Oh.” Carl closes his eyes. “So she did this to someone else? To someone else’s family?”

“I don’t know about all of it, but the fires, yeah. I think so.” Stiles looks down at his laptop. “I’m going to be turning this over to the cops when I’m done. It’s uh, not like they’re going to be able to charge anybody so if you want… I don’t have to…” He finds a smile somewhere and offers it up to Carl like maybe it’ll help. “No one has to know what she did.”

“No. People should know.” He says. “There will be others.” There’s something grim and determined about him that… _oh hell_.

Stiles sits up as his brain makes another one of those connections that he could have lived his entire life without. He holds off on checking his phone until he and Carl exchange cellphone numbers.

“Let me get a picture for your contact?” He asks and Carl nods his permission.

Later, when he stops on the road for dinner he uploads the photo to his computer so he can compare it to one of the rare shots he has of Derek that his eyes didn’t wash out. He’s wearing colored contact lenses for a Halloween party and looking pissed off about it because someone tricked him into going as Jacob from Twilight.

(That someone _might_ have been Stiles. It was an easy costume; blue jeans, no shirt, and a temporary tattoo. He really shouldn’t complain. It’s not _Stiles’_ fault Derek lives under a _rock_ and never heard of the book or the movie before he was swamped by squealing high school girls.)

He lines Carl up next to Derek and… there is a definite similarity. They have the same build, dark hair, and hazel/green eyes. Carl is clean shaven, but scruff is a life choice. It’s close enough to be significant.

Stiles knows that there’s some kind of history between Derek and Kate. She was the one who shot him that one time (that awful, _awful_ time when Stiles almost had to cut off a person’s _arm_ ), but Stiles never read more into it than Derek being the one who literally got away. Now he’s wondering if there was maybe more to it.

God, he hopes not.

Still, he makes the calls.

It’s not good.


	3. The MacDougall Paradox

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time it happens –it’s not that Stiles thinks nothing of it. It’s more like he doesn’t even realize it’s happening. More like he’s too distracted by the unexplained blackout to remember the extraordinarily ugly stray cat who jumped up into his lap right before it happened.
> 
> He wakes up curled up on his side behind a dumpster that is mercifully located behind a Circle-K where no one can see him in order to ask any awkward questions. His mouth tastes like something died in it and he has no recollection of how he got there.
> 
> It maybe says something about the life he’s been living heretofore that his first few thoughts are to check himself for: clothes, mysterious bite marks, claw marks, glowing sigils, or track marks. He finds himself in possession of the first, but none of the others.
> 
> Another worrying omen about his life choices is the fact that waking up fully clothed in a weird place is infinitely more distressing than waking up in a weird place completely naked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Douglas MacDougall is the physician who tried to quantify the weight of human souls by placing scales under the beds of dying patients.

The first time it happens –it’s not that Stiles thinks _nothing_ of it. It’s more like he doesn’t even realize it’s happening. More like he’s too distracted by the unexplained blackout to remember the extraordinarily _ugly_ stray cat who jumped up into his lap right before it happened.

He wakes up curled up on his side behind a dumpster that is mercifully located behind a Circle-K where no one can see him in order to ask any awkward questions. His mouth tastes like something died in it and he has no recollection of how he got there.

It maybe says something about the life he’s been living heretofore that his first few thoughts are to check himself for: clothes, mysterious bite marks, claw marks, glowing sigils, or track marks. He finds himself in possession of the first, but none of the others.

Another worrying omen about his life choices is the fact that waking up fully clothed in a weird place is infinitely more distressing than waking up in a weird place completely naked.

Of course, there is another likely option for waking up in a back alley with no memory of how he got there and it’s kind of sad that it’s taken Stiles this long to consider the possibility that he might have gotten mugged. He dips a hand into his pocket to check for his phone, wallet, and key ring.

They’re all there with his cash, bank card, and ID all intact. His battery even has a full charge, but the clock on his phone tells him that he’s been out of it for nearly an entire day. He gives himself the same field sobriety tests his dad gives tipsy drivers and once he’s walked heel-to-toe in a straight line, balanced on one foot, touched the tip of his nose with his head tilted back and his eyes closed, recited the alphabet forwards and backwards, and counted backwards in multiples of 2 from 72 to 34 he has to admit he is neither drunk nor impaired.

It definitely says something about his life that the first thing he does is send out a mass text that reads: **BLACKED OUT ARND 9 AM. MISSING 12 HRS. SOBER + HAVE WALLET, ETC. AM BEHIND CIRCLE K @ MAIN + HOLLY. HELP PLZ?**

Stiles doesn’t think about what it means that a shiny black Camaro is the first car to pull up in the parking lot because it doesn’t bear thinking about. Derek is a control freak; OF COURSE he’s the first one on site. Isaac bounds out of the car almost before Derek puts it into park and piles into Stiles with nary a ‘hello’ before he buries his nose into Stiles’ throat.

“I smell… burnt sugar and crappy apple danishes.” He pulls back, nostrils twitching.

“I had breakfast at the Starbucks two blocks from my house.” Stiles says because it’s true. College has played havoc on his work habits and somehow it’s just easier to get into the groove at a coffee shop instead of his dad’s kitchen table. “Caramel latte and an apple strudel. I’ve been doing my summer coursework there.”

“It smells fresh.” Issac snuffles his shoulder and then circles around to his back. “It shouldn’t smell fresh.”

“One day my personal boundaries are going to grow back.” Stiles comments to the world in general as Issac pulls his arm up and sniffs there too –although, who’s he kidding? If that was going to happen then it would have happened while he was away at school or maybe during that blissful phase of silence when Derek and Cora were in NYC.

“No they won’t.” Issac sneezes and pulls away. “I don’t smell anything on you except substandard pastries and whatever is lurking behind that dumpster.”

“So, wait… I’ve been back there _all day_?” Stiles squeaks because that is damn alarming.

“No, more like twenty minutes.” Issac makes a face. “Thirty tops. The garbage smell would have soaked in otherwise.” He looks at Derek. “This isn’t good.”

Derek is hanging back with his arms crossed over his chest, looking much the same as always except perhaps two shades more grim than the usual.

“Well, at least I don’t smell like goat blood or incense.” Stiles is only half joking. He’s been kidnapped by cultists for demonic rituals before. It wasn’t fun and is pretty much the reason he got rid of his virginity at the first available opportunity… but the joke falls flat as the two werewolves stare at him. “What?”

“It’s not what you smell like that’s the problem.” Issac’s brow creases and he keeps stealing little half glances at Derek like he’s looking for a cue. “It’s what you _don’t_ smell like. I can still smell your shampoo and what you had for breakfast. They should be at least a little stale and I can’t pick up any traces of how you got here. It’s like you’re literally missing time.”

“Where did you leave the Jeep?” Derek asks suddenly.

“Uh, it should be in the parking lot outside the Starbucks.” Stiles gulps. ‘Should’ evidently being the operative word here.

“Get him in the car, Isaac.” Derek turns abruptly, leaving Isaac to do his bidding.

“Come on, Stiles.” Isaac puts a hand on his shoulder and gently guides him towards the car.

Most of the time Stiles is glad Isaac got over that ‘raging asshat’ phase he had at the beginning of his wolfish career, but sometimes (perversely) he misses it. Especially during times like these when the wolfy contingent is touching him as though one wrong breath on their part means he’ll fly apart like cigarette ash.

Those times have been coming more and more often as they all get older. It’s been seven years since Scott and Stiles took an ill-advised stroll in the woods that ended in a nasty case of lycanthropy for Scott, but sometimes it feels like Stiles is living his life in dog years. He’s a college senior. He’s supposed to be invincible right now –or at least feel that way.

Instead he lets Isaac hustle him into the cramped backseat of Derek’s sports car and his melancholy lasts exactly as long as it takes him to notice something off about the interior.

“Derek, man, _seriously_?” He yelps as he runs a hand over the smooth barely worn leather seats. “Did you replace your black Camaro _with another black Camaro_?”

The wry look Isaac shoots him over his shoulder tells him that this is a well-worn argument. “It’s a newer make.” He offers and leaves out the fact that the car looks pretty much identical from the outside. The only reason Stiles noticed the change at all is because the old Camaro had upholstery instead of leather interiors. “Cora was voting for a minivan.”

Stiles blinks and sits back down as he tries (and fails) to envision Derek behind the wheel of a mom-mobile. He can only get as close at the old Toyota, which at least had four wheel drive. His eyes meet Derek’s in the rearview mirror and if the expression in them is anything to go by, Derek can see him struggling with that mental image. “Nevermind.” Stiles squeaks. “Good choice, Derek, my man. I approve. I don’t think the Hale pack is ready for that kind of image change.”

“That’s what I said.” Isaac says, cheerfully ignorant (or ignoring) the byplay going on between his Alpha and his… Stiles.

The ride is mercifully short –not because there’s a lack of conversation, because at this stage of the game Isaac and Stiles can talk for hours about almost nothing at all and expecting Derek to do anything other than stare at the road with steely determination is an exercise in futility.

Stiles’ stuff is gone from his table when they duck into the Starbucks, but one of the baristas produces his backpack with a glare when she spots him. Isaac and Derek abandon him to face the woman down alone under the guise of checking the parking lot for Stiles’ jeep.

“You’re lucky I even noticed.” The barista says as she winds down from a lecture that has obviously been brewing for a while. Stiles had no idea so many highschool kids liked to ditch their stuff in public places, but he kind of resents having to pay the wages of their sins. “Where did you even go? One minute you were there, typing away, and the next it was like you’d vanished. I didn’t even hear the door chime.” She adds that last with something akin to grudging admiration, which is probably deserved. There’s a big old school brass bell over the café’s door that came with the building and the Starbuck’s franchise decided to keep, mainly because the thing uses no electricity and is still somehow loud enough to wake the dead.

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to be gone, but … stuff happened.” Stiles tries his best to project ‘charmingly absentminded’, which usually ends up something closer to ‘harmlessly spacey’ but it works when he needs to deflect attention. “Anything else weird happen today?” He adds the question as an afterthought because even as distracted as the woman clearly is, she’s still the only witness he has access to and might have noticed something.

… but the barista just shrugs. “Nothing much. The old mackerel tabby that lives in the alley behind the shop got in by accident and freaked out, but I suppose that was inevitable. Why do you ask?”

“No reason.” Stiles shoulders his bag and his brain is already munching away at the problem. “Thanks for grabbing my stuff. You didn’t have to do that and I appreciate it.”

She shrugs and then smiles. “Don’t worry about it… but if the guilt is keeping you up at night, you should call me. I might have written my number down in the flyleaf of your chemistry textbook.” She winks.

“We’ll see.” Stiles smiles so he won’t grimace because it’s not like she isn’t cute and gutsy as hell, but Stiles has learned the hard way that he’s a horrible thing to inflict on cute gutsy girls –especially ones who look hot in glasses and make awesome coffee. Either they almost get snacked on by vampires or turn out to be hunters looking for easy access to the local supernatural community.

Turns out Kate Argent isn’t the only hunter in history to deploy her (or on one very memorable occasion _his_ ) wiles in the name of the Hunt.

Stiles finds Isaac and Derek in the parking lot where they are apparently cross-examining his poor old jeep. Seriously, they’re one dark room and a bright light away from telling it they have ways of making it talk.

“Did she see anything?” Derek grunts as Stiles approaches him. No need to ask who ‘she’ is.

“Nope. One minute I was there the next I was gone.” Stiles makes to sling his bag into the car and manfully restrains his sigh when Derek blocks him with one arm, eyeing the decrepit old car like it’s going to blow up the second it makes contact with his bio-chemistry coursework.

“Did you get anything else?”

“Unless you count her phone number then no.” Stiles frowns. Usually supernatural freakiness (if that is what this is) leaves a little more evidence around. Despite what you might have heard magic isn’t actually the subtle art it claims to be.

“Really?” Isaac shoots him an odd look that’s kind of half-grin and half-sympathy, which… okay. Yes. Isaac is in the same boat Stiles is stuck in. He, of all people, understands the pleasant rush that comes with being pursued… but he also knows why Stiles will never ever be able to encourage it. So maybe it’s not an odd look at all.

“Leave the jeep here until Deaton can see it.” Derek says it in that oh-so-charming alpha male ‘of course I know what’s best for the pathetically fragile human being’ tone he excels at.

… although Stiles could be projecting a little. Well, at least he’s not too far from home. It’s a short walk.

“Doc is away at a conference.” Isaac pipes up from underneath the jeep’s chassis, where he is apparently channeling his inner bomb-squad sniffer dog. “Scott’s got the clinic for the next two weeks, remember?”

Stiles sighs, but doesn’t argue because he’s not dumb. Derek is right (for once) and he has no idea what prompted his little blackout. Everything in his life is suspect until they find out what happened. “That’s going to be a lot of walking. At least home is nearby.” He didn’t actually mean to say that outloud, but in his defense he wasn’t anticipating Derek’s response either.

“You’re coming to the House.”

Hale House is always ‘the house’ to Derek. Possibly in his mind there are no other houses that merit the name. Everywhere else is a ‘place’; Scott’s mother’s place, the Sherriff’s place, Deaton’s place, that place at the intersection of Third and Main, etc.

“Uh… _no_?” Stiles does not wilt when Derek turns the full-on Alpha glare of ‘you WILL obey me’ on him. He does _not_ (maybe a little). Derek hasn’t been an Alpha for years now, but parts of the mojo seem to cling –maybe it’s because he gave it up willingly rather than having lost it. “I haven’t even been home for a week. It’s going to look a little weird if I suddenly check out and go somewhere else.”

“You’ve graduated. It follows that you’re moving out.” Derek says and his expression edges toward ‘bitchface’. “Tell him that.” (Stiles’ dad is almost always ‘him’. In person he is ‘sir’ and occasionally he is ‘the Sheriff’ when being referred to in the third person. Stiles isn’t too sure what that translates to in the lexicon of Derek, but he’s pretty sure it’s a distancing technique… although why Derek feels the need to put a social barrier between himself and Stiles’ dad is completely unfathomable.)

“For starters? I have not graduated _yet_. I still have two classes left in addition to studying for my LSATs and for another thing I think my dad is going to expect more from me than a quick text saying ‘ **BTW MOVING IN W/THE HALE COMMUNE** ’.”

“It is not a _commune_.” He’s definitely wearing his **> :[** face now.

“Uh, Derek?” Isaac pops up from the other side of the jeep. “It kind of is.” Derek turns the bitchface in Isaac’s direction (probably because Isaac is undermining Derek’s end goal of having the entire pack under one roof) and the beta holds up his hands in mock surrender. “My mistake. Stiles clearly needs to be under constant supervision until we’re sure there’s nothing wrong with him.”

“Here’s a novel idea.” Stiles pinches the bridge of his nose. “How about I text my dad and tell him I’m spending a few days with Scott instead?”

“Don’t go getting all reasonable on us, Stiles.” Isaac puts an arm around his shoulders and starts to tow him towards the Camaro. He brightens as an idea occurs to him. “Hey, we should stop by the grocery store on the way back home. Cora ate the last yogurt this morning.”

Stiles favors him with a sidelong squint. “This had better not be a ploy to get me to take over cooking, Lahey.” To date Stiles is the only person in his acquaintance to bother learning how to make food that doesn’t start out frozen or in cans, which is total bullshit since an enhanced sense of smell automatically equates an enhanced sense of taste. All his wolfy little friends love homemade food (or whatever approximation they can get) but they’re also all too lazy to do their own cooking.

“I would _never_.”

He totally does, but in Isaac’s defense Derek’s the one who loads up the cart with the ingredients for Swedish meatballs while Stiles’ attention is diverted by a really good sale on pork chops.

Well… whatever. Stiles likes to cook and it’s nice to do it for people who aren’t predisposed towards hypertension.

 

* * *

 

A few days turns into two weeks after Stiles wakes up one morning in the middle of the damn woods. This time he doesn’t have his phone and it is only by the grace of a benevolent god that he finds a highway straight away, which leads him to a gas station where he’s able to make a collect call for help.

To say his friend are displeased is to put it pretty fucking mildly because near as anyone can figure, Stiles vanished off of the front porch when he went to shoo some truly suicidal deer away from a break in the fence protecting Cora’s vegetable garden.

“Do you remember anything at all?” Dr. Deaton has him sitting in the middle of a circle made of sacred salt, holly berries, and talcum powder. He hands Stiles a sage smudge stick as he works.

“Not really.” Stiles thinks hard. This time isn’t quite the total blank that his first episode was, but he’s only got a few dreamy wisps to hold onto and they tend to evaporate once he gets his mental paws on them. “I remember… jumping?” He frowns because that’s a bad word to describe the motion in his dream. It was more like flying and falling all at the same time as the woods blurred around him and he flowed with a tide of lithe brown bodies who were all like him except… _not_.

“Hmmm…” Deaton doesn’t usually mess around too much with the flashy equipment, but that day he works through all his subtle tricks and ends up going to far as to sit Stiles in front of a silver bowl filled with sanctified water to see if it’ll smoke in his presence: _nada_. “I can’t find any trace of malignant influence on you. Whatever this is it’s not a spell or a curse.”

“It’s got to be _something_.” Scott protests because he’s the only one of the pack aside from Stiles who doesn’t mysteriously vanish whenever Dr. Deaton trots out the serious hoodoo. “Isaac picked him up nearly forty miles away from the house this time.”

“There’s nothing I can do without knowing exactly what’s happening during these episodes.” Deaton settles back on his heels as he stares into the smooth surface of the water in the silver scrying bowl. “You’ll need to watch him at all times. Someone needs to be present when this happens again.”

Scott likes that about as well as Stiles does, if only because that idea works on the assumption that Stiles is going to _have_ another episode which is something the pack would like to avoid at all costs.

The good news is that Stiles gets plenty of study time while watching Jersey Shore reruns with Cora ignoring his existence and Isaac, who tag-teams babysitting duties while everyone else is at work. His dad is less than pleased with the amount of time Stiles is spending away from home, but that LSAT won’t know what hit it.

The bad news is that privacy (already a rare commodity in a house full of freakin’ werewolves) becomes a fond memory. Scott and Isaac will literally tail him into the restroom and sit outside the stall while he goes his thing. Cora will idly follow him around the house with a running commentary that balances the knife edge between friendly and cutting, which makes Stiles wish he could wolf-out himself just to blow off some steam without mauling her because he actually _likes_ Cora. They are asshole siblings of the heart. She’s just hard to take on a constant, unrelenting basis.

Worst of all is his sleeping situation because it’s not like they can put a baby monitor in the guest room and call it a night.

“Turn out the light, Stiles.” Derek grunts from somewhere up in his massive California king.

“Screw you. I need to finish this chapter.” Stiles’ cot is laid out on the floor of the master suite tonight because Stiles has been through everyone else’s bedrooms at this point and has been kicked out of every single one that he didn’t walk out of himself first. Cora snores. Isaac can’t sleep with a light on. Scott and Allison are remarkably not shy about having sex with someone else in the room and Stiles really just… can’t. Jackson is on leave from Cambridge so his sleep schedule is completely fucked and he won’t go to sleep if someone else is in the room (who isn’t Lydia) and keeps _talking_ when Stiles is trying to either read or sleep. Bunking down in the room where they keep Peter is _right out_.

So now he’s stuck with Derek.

… who is getting out of bed and stealing Stiles’ book.

“Hey!” Stiles objects, but it’s nothing compared to the way he sputters when Derek hauls him up by the back of his shirt and shoves him towards the bed. “What the _sh_ …”

“I can’t see you if you’re on the floor.” Derek pushes him towards the side of the bed furthest from the door and windows. “You need to be closer if I’m going to wake up when something happens.”

“I love how it’s not ‘if’, but ‘when’.” Stiles doesn’t resist Derek’s autocratic orders. He’d do worse than share a bed with Derek Hale to get access to a decent mattress. The cot’s been hell on his back and he’s reached the point where he’s in legitimate fear of developing a hump. “ _Fffffuck_ , Derek. What is this mattress made out of? _Baby seals_? Christ. I’m never leaving. Get lost. This is my bed now.”

“Whatever.” The mattress doesn’t even creak under Derek’s weight as he stretches out next to Stiles. “If you steal the blankets, I’ll…”

“… tear my throat out with your teeth, yeah yeah. Second verse, same as the first. I got it.” Stiles groans and feels the tension leech out of his bones. “Don’t even care. Dying would be worth it.” The duvet is thick and heavy over the smoothest cotton sheets Stiles has ever had the privilege of lying on… which probably isn’t saying much. All his bedsheets come from Walmart on clearance. “ _Oooh yeah_.”

A heavy hand falls over his mouth. “ _Go to sleep_.” Derek growls and Stiles rolls his eyes, makes a noise that he hopes is interpreted as ‘yeah whatever’, and rolls over.

He doesn’t want to think about how long he lays awake listening to Derek breathe in the darkness; a steady rhythm that eventually follows him all the way into sleep.

 

* * *

 

Nothing happens.

Nothing happens for like another week. It’s ridiculous and Stiles has to sleep in Derek’s room the entire time, which… is a lot less weird than it should be.

Turns out Derek’s a pretty decent person to share a bed with. He doesn’t snore, doesn’t kick, doesn’t drool, or anything at all except radiate heat and breathe softly. Stiles is seriously considering marrying him now that the whole Prop 8 shit show is over. By now Stiles has shared beds with enough people that he knows it won’t get any better than this.

“You steal the blankets.” Is Derek’s response when Stiles blearily proposes to him one morning. “You sleep talk constantly and sometimes I think you are actually chasing rabbits in your dreams.”

“Nah, not rabbits.” Stiles replies before he can think better of it. Pre-caffeine Stiles is not to be asked questions for pretty much this reason. He has no filter ---like, even less filter than usual. People have no idea what kind of things Stiles keeps himself from saying on a daily basis. “Mice maybe. It was dark. Tiny little heartbeats and quivering somethings. Whiskers. I don’t know.” He manages to snap his mouth shut before he gets to the part about how their bones crunched under his hands/feet/teeth(?) like winter dried twigs.

Derek makes The Face at him. There is no way to describe The Face. It is unique to Derek and Stiles can only get his point across by saying it’s what the statement ‘re-consider what you just said’ would look like if someone molded it onto a skull.

Stiles shrugs with a thunderously mutinous expression. The dream was what it was.

“I’ll call Deaton.” Derek says and sounds about as enthusiastic about it as Stiles feels. Neither of them have Scott’s trust in the Emissary because really they both know better. Deaton picked Scott out as his new Alpha from very nearly the first moment Scott got the Bite. He’s old, subtle, terrible in his own way, and has never really forgiven Derek for the mistakes that cost Deaton his first pack. He’s always been a ‘the end justifies the means’ sort of guy and his ends don’t really benefit anyone who isn’t Scott or part of Scott’s pack.

Derek is and always will be Hale Pack. He was an Alpha once and that means to one degree or another he’ll never bow to another. He exists in a sort of uneasy truce with Scott that’s eventually melted into something approaching friendship (with clear inviolable boundaries) and they live together because the world is a fucking terrible place for the furry. It’s safer to stick together, which is a lesson that took them both four years of mayhem to learn. They learned it though and it stuck.   


Stiles, on the other hand, is just hard to like. He knows it and has accepted it as much as you can really ‘accept’ that sort of thing. He can count the number of people who _love_ him on the fingers of one hand. The others tolerate him or have some grudging respect and admiration for the things he’s done. Even Melissa McCall who is one of those people who love him doesn’t actually _like_ him. She’s good at sublimating it - _really_ good- but it slips out sometimes when he goes the extra step that turns out to be one too far. He even forgets sometimes, but eventually gets reminded …like the time when she had the chance to order Scott to give up anything she wanted and she chose _Stiles_.

(Not that Stiles is bitter about that or anything.)

Deaton doesn’t have a lifetime of memories and pity to keep him on Stiles’ side. So _no_ , Stiles really isn’t up for relying too much on Scott’s creepy pet druid.

“Suck it up, Princess.” Derek thumps him on the nose with the back of one knuckle. “If you’ve got a better idea then I’d like to hear it. One day I want my bedroom back.”

“You and me both, buddy.” Stiles grumbles as they stumble into the bathroom. He hands Derek the shaving cream and Derek passes over the toothpaste. Make all the Odd Couple jokes you want, they never stumble over each other in the pre-coffee fugue.

Of course, then Stiles blacks out while Derek’s in the shower and wakes up stranded up what has to be the tallest fucking tree in the preserve ---in his _boxers_ because _why not_ and getting down is the single most harrowing experience of Stiles’ life bar none.

…until he sees who is waiting for him at the base of the tree anyway.

“You never called me.” The Starbucks barista says sweetly. “So I had to find you the old fashioned way. Sorry it took so long.” She’s dressed up a little like Rosie the Riveter today with her ginger curls tied up in a floral bandana and a denim coat over paisley leggings. She’s still pretty damn cute, but also kind of menacing. Stiles has learned the hard way to be really fucking wary of people wearing impractical shoes in the middle of the wilderness.

“Um.” Is Stiles’ reply.

“Yeah, I know.” She says and looks like she means it. “This is all pretty scary, huh? It’s okay. I’m here now.”

“What.” Stiles grips the tree truck a little harder and considers climbing back up the way he came. Suddenly his fear of heights seems a lot less crippling.

“ _Look_ at you!” She coos and claps her hand like he just did a particularly clever trick. “You seriously think I’m going to take you home and make a skin coat out of you.”

“The thought crossed my mind, yes.”

Well, it _did_.

“I knew you were going to be a survivor.” She says as she toes off her open-toe ballet flats to reveal the funky rings on her toes. This is really not fair. Stiles was already beating himself for not being able to hit that. This is just rubbing salt in the wound. “I knew it from day one. I almost didn’t want to leave you, but that’s how it’s done. It sounds like such bullshit from the outside, but you’ll understand one day. Now come on down. You’re safe with me.”

“Look, lady.” Stiles adjusts his grip and starts climbing back up the tree because suddenly? Being up incredibly high where his screams will carry for miles sounds like an AWESOME idea. “No offense, but I have heard that before and at this point I am WAY too genre savvy to get anywhere near you.”

“Hmmm, you have a point.” The barista concedes his point with a shrug. “Go ahead and call for your werewolves if you want, but they aren’t going to come for you in time. Even they’ve got their limits. You flew a long way before you digested that soul.”

Stiles freezes. “Excuse you, _what_?”

“Yeah, I know that feel.” She crinkles her improbably cute and freckled snub nose at him. “So weird, right?”

“ _Excuse you_ , _WHAT_?” Stiles repeats himself.

“It’s less horrible than it sounds, baby.” The barista’s edges are starting to blue and fade and meld –or maybe it’s just everything that blurry; the sun, the skin, the bark underneath his hands –it’s all trickling away from him and all he can feel at all are arms that aren’t really arms surrounding him all safe and warm and _smothering_.

Waking up comes as a slight unpleasantly pleasant surprise.

He’s warm for one and comfortable all tucked into a cushy bed with thick blankets and smooth sheets. Everything feels new – _soft_. Someone is playing with his hair and humming a tuneless song that sounds like it ought to be familiar even though he knows he’s never heard it before.

“Morning, sleepy.” The not-barista says and doesn’t flinch when Stiles’ attempt to lurch away is drawn up short by the shackles on his wrists and ankles. “I realize you’re too _genre savvy_ to believe me yet, but I don’t actually want to hurt you.” She shrugs one shoulder. Her wardrobe is vintage eighties today and her lavender boat-neck shift flops over to slide down her arm. She’s wearing big inverted gold triangle earrings that twist and shimmer under her ears. “…but you’re one big bundle of survival instincts right now and you’re not gonna listen until I give you proof so for now you wear the shackles until I know you’re not running off somewhere getting shot by hunters or exorcised by a Druid.” She sighs, blowing frizzy kinked hair out of her eyes. “You know, there weren’t so many of them in town when I left you here. I wouldn’t have, if I knew. Ugh, coulda-shoulda-woulda. You survived. That’s the important part and I have to be at work soon.”

There’s a TV hung on the wall opposite him and she turns it on. The opening scene of the Firefly pilot starts playing. “I dunno if this is your cup of tea or what, but it’ll make the time go by faster.” She tosses the remote onto the nightstand by the bed. She leaves, humming that same haunting song and Stiles is alone.

Firefly is nice familiar white noise, although he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to break the association after this. However, it’s in theme with the rest of the room he’s in. If he’d woken up alone he’d have assumed it was decorated creepy kidnapper obsession style with him in mind. The bedding is nicer than the furniture, which is the same mix of curb finds and Ikea pieces that all Stiles’ apartments tend to wind up with even if he starts over from scratch. The wall art is mostly movie posters with a slight Joss Whedon bent; Avengers, Buffy, Serenity, Cabin in the Woods, Toy Story, Dr Horrible, etc…

The thing is that the posters are old and most have that little line of dust on top where no one ever remembers to wave a rag. They’ve been in place for a couple of years at least and each one has lacey edges where they’ve been moved before.

Stiles has basically been kidnapped by his dream date, except for the part where she talks to him like a freaking tv mom.

“What the shitting _shit_ …” Stiles groans and starts wiggling against his bindings. It’s no good, but he tries anyway. They’re not tight enough to cut off his circulation, but he’s not wriggling out even if he manages to dislocate a thumb. Someone is very up on all the tricks he uses to get out of these situations.

Basically he’s stuck waiting for the wolf brigade.

“Oh my god, I’m gonna die.” He wheezes and makes himself stare at Nathan Fillion’s ass in leather pants before he has his first panic attack in eight years.

She gets home latish. Stiles doesn’t know the time, but the angle and color of the light through the window suggest the sun is almost set. She seems tired when she walks in the door, but it fades the further inside she gets until she opens the door and walks in with a spring in her step. Firefly is on the last episode with the credits rolling.

“I timed that pretty well.” She chirps and rattles a take-out bag at him. “You’d better like fried chicken because hell no am I cooking.”

He eats because the first thing you learn about being kidnapped is that if they offer you food you eat the food. Don’t worry about what is IN the food or might have been done to and/or around the food because not eating the food is absolutely the way to be too weak to get loose when your chance comes.

“Hmmm.” Is all she says when he doesn’t fight her for hand feeding him. “Poor baby.” Like she _gets_ it.

 _Fuck off_ , Stockholm Syndrome.

Dinner ends and she leaves to deal with trash, but comes back to wipe Stiles’ face with a wetnap.

“All right, I think we’re due for that talk now.” She says settling herself down on the natty armchair next to the bed and… starts untying his legs. She laughs when he goes still with anticipation. “Hah. No, you just think you want to run, but you won’t. I have answers you want.”

“You haven’t got any answers I want that bad, lady.” Stiles replies flatly.

“Oh yes, I do.” She moves to his wrists. “The reason you’re going to stay is the same reason it’s been so much easier for you since your little friend got bit.” She looks at him to gauge his reaction and it’s like she can see under his skin to all the weird little thoughts and impulses that he’s usually so good at hiding. She smiles with those gorgeous movie-star teeth. “You never look at him anymore and think: _I could eat_. Am I right?”

Stiles doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t run when she unties his hands either.


	4. Waiting For the Other Shoe to Drop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s been three years to the day since Stiles last set foot in Beacon Hills so of course today would be the day when she answers the door to find Derek Hale bleeding out on her welcome mat.
> 
> They stare at each other for a weird tense moment and he says, “I think I have the wrong address.”
> 
> Or: that one where getting turned into a girl is a really bad way to find out you have gender dismorphia.

\- 0 -

His dad is already there by the time Stiles wakes up groggy and cross-eyed in Moongsong’s spare bedroom. Some of the girls are sitting with him and they’re all wearing faces that mean Words Have Been Had, but no one is bleeding or a toad so the words can’t have been all that bad.

“Hey.” His voice is rusty and high-pitched at the same time, which is weird but better than some of the alternatives. He’s been surfing from supernatural community to supernatural community since high school, but witch covens produce the lowest body count of any that he’s had to deal with yet.

So, yeah, _maybe_ someone occasionally ends up with a third all-seeing eye in the middle of their forehead, but they’re at least alive long enough to get annoyed about it.

“Hey there …son.” There’s something pinched about the way his dad says the last word even though his hand is warm and solid on Stiles’ forehead.

Georgie, the ancient and venerable matron of the Berkeley circle of magic users, hip checks the door open. She’s got a silver tea service that Stiles does not like the look of. She only gets the silver out when she’s curse-breaking or when the local Alpha (who is kind of an asshole) comes over to visit. Hamilton is nowhere in evidence, which means the strange ache in his back and joints isn’t the result of falling off his Vespa again.

“Sit up if you can, Stiles.” Georgie helps him when Stiles flounders a bit. She might be coming on ninety years old, but witches wear age differently than regular people. The years have only made her tough as an old oak. Her apprentices flicker in and out of the room obeying silent her commands. Stiles would usually try to listen in, but his body feels weird whenever someone touches him. Parts of him that were hard yesterday _give_ in ways he can’t quite wrap his brain about.

His dad sits silent and pensive while Georgie examines Stiles with a crystal loupe, dusts him with salt, feeds him two different blends of her noxious medical tisanes. The lines framing her mouth deepen with each treatment. Stiles fades in and out of consciousness, but his input isn’t really required it seems because they let him sleep…

…and sleep…

…and _sleep_ …

Stiles is forced to judge time by the amount of stubble that accumulates on his dad’s chin because no one will let him out of the bed or even out from under the covers. His brain, however, cannot be stopped from settling and the grogginess fades to the point where he realizes that someone has been fucking _sedating_ him.

Moonsong makes a face when Stiles starts to reject his morning tea. “It’s for the best right now, sweetie.” She pleads while playing up that sultry Texas accent of hers because she knows it makes him want to do anything she says, but that’s not working on him right now because he’s been stuck in bed for a day and a half. Finals are coming and no one will let him have his books.

“I appreciate what you think you’re doing, but I’m not staying in bed anymore and I’m not taking more drugs.” They tussle a little and Moonsong gets the upper hand when Stiles gets tangled in the sheets because she fights dirty, but his bladder is painfully full and there is no way he’s letting Christie, a first year RN, catheterize him the way he heard her talking about in the hall.

He staggers into the hall bathroom like a seventy year old drunk. Nothing balances the way it’s supposed to and gravity pulls on him all wrong. He feels bottom and top heavy at the same time balanced atop spindly little feet. He pitches up against the sink and catches the edge to prop himself up.

It’s only by chance that he looks in the mirror.

He usually doesn’t. It’s not… he’s okay with his body, but he doesn’t spend a lot of time on it. _Jackson_ was always the type to spend twenty minutes in front of the mirror perfecting his stupid douchey WASP cowlick. Stiles spent years buzzing his hair short at home and when Scott finally convinced him to grow his hair out a little he chose the one haircut he knew he could style blind with a little gel on his fingers in thirty seconds. His wardrobe consists of ten variations of the same outfit. So, _no_ , he doesn’t spend a lot of time in front of the mirror but he knows the face he usually sees in it.

It’s not the one looking back at him.

She’s _pretty_ is the thing. Stiles would have never predicted that. He comes from attractive blood stock, but he’s been stuck in the gangly weird-looking phase since puberty hit. The girl in the mirror is equally lanky, but it’s graceful on her. She touches the glass with long tapering fingertips (pianist’s hands, just like his mother’s) and leans in towards him echoing the way Stiles is helplessly drawn in towards her. Her eyes are honey brown and just _huge_ like it would take nothing at all to drown in them. She parts her lips -those pretty naturally flushed lips- and says in Stiles’ altered voice: “ _Oh_.”

His dad appears over her shoulder with shadowed eyes full of remembered pain. It’s not his mom’s face in the mirror, but Stiles thinks maybe it might be the face his dad remembers falling in love with all those years ago. His hand closes around her shoulder at the same time Stiles feels it on his and he lets his dad turn him around.

“Come away, son.” His voice is quiet and sad and hits Stiles like a fist because the face in the mirror belongs to him now.

“Oh.” He says and lets his dad pull him away. “ _Oh_.”

So that’s what the curse did.

-1-

It’s been three years to the day since Stiles last set foot in Beacon Hills so of course today would be the day when she answers the door to find Derek Hale bleeding out on her welcome mat.

They stare at each other for a weird tense moment and he says, “I think I have the wrong address.”

“Oh you have got to be kidding me!” She snarls as she grabs him by the front of the shirt, drags him inside, and manhandles him into the kitchen which has a linoleum floor for pretty much this exact reason. He tries to get up after she puts him in a chair, but she shoves him back down and stuffs a wadded up tea-towel into the _gaping wound_ in his side. “Keep pressure on that. Do not let up or move.”

Her date leaves the bedroom stumbling and hopping into his pants (and only his pants) as Stiles goes to get the first aid kit out from under the sink in her en suite. He’s left his cute hipster glasses off and from the way he’s squinting at her, they’re a lot less decorative than she originally thought.

“Whass wrong?” He blinks hard, trying to force himself awake. “Who was is the door? Is that…blood?”

They both stare at the front of her formerly fancy lace nightie before Stiles lifts his face up by the chin and guides him into meeting her eyes.

“You had fun tonight, but we just don’t have that spark.” She tells him and he nods dully as his eyes go vacant and a little dreamy.

“It’s not you, it’s me.” He murmurs.

“There’s someone else you’ve been thinking about, but never had the courage to talk to.” She continues because she hates doing this without there being some payoff for the poor bastard involved. “Tomorrow you’re going to be brave and say ‘hi’.”

“Yeah…” He lets her shove him in the direction of his clothes and doesn’t object when she takes his phone, deletes her number out of it, and pushes him out the front door.

Derek’s still there when she gets back lugging the heavy duffle bag that contains all the supernatural ends and bobs she’s collected over the years.

“Not a _word_.” She points at him as she drops it on the floor and starts to rifle through it.

Unfortunately, Derek never was any good at listening. “ _Stiles_?” He says, like it’s a difficult concept. In his defense, it probably is. Stiles didn’t have any tits the last time they met, which would be explainable except for the other things she’d acquired since then that aren’t.

“The one and only. Hold still.” Triage for werewolves has kind of an insane difficulty curve. They can walk off anything up to and sometimes including a missing part, but if the wound doesn’t heal right away then odds are likely that it will actively fight being treated. Derek’s wound is messy, but closing up even as Stiles starts to clean it. The best she can figure is that his system prioritized his internal damage over getting the ugly superficial bleeding under control. If Derek had holed up somewhere and put pressure on the wound like he was supposed to, he’d probably already be healed up and devouring a steak to replace lost blood. “You’re lucky. It’s messier than it is serious.” She tells him and concentrates on pulling shards of… fucking _concrete_ and possibly rebar out of his abdomen before his skin can close over it.

Hopefully whatever did this is dead, but if it isn’t Stiles is probably going to need to make some calls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea here is that Stiles totally does have gender dysmorphia ...along with every other kind of dysmorphia you could possibly have without them starting to cancel each other out.


	5. All Roads Lead to You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a world where Scott never went to Stiles for help … and yet, somehow, the supernatural stuff overwhelms his life anyway.
> 
> Because Stiles’ luck is awesome like that.

Stiles loses his best friend around the beginning of sophomore year, but Stiles is a stubborn stupid bastard so it takes him until the beginning of junior year to realize it.

The night when Stiles drags Scott out to go look for half a murdered body is the beginning of the end and if he could figure out a way to apologize so that Scott would hear it, he would, because in retrospect Stiles can understand that he crossed a line. He doesn’t know where that line was or how he put a foot over it, but clearly it was _somewhere_ out in that stupid forest because Scott starts dodging his calls the next day.

He’s tried apologizing on those rare occasions when he’s either got Scott cornered or they’re otherwise alone together, but Scott just gets this raw-edged expression like he’s being pinched somewhere deep on the inside and can’t make it stop. “It’s nothing you did. It’s me. I’m sorry.” He says and they make plans to meet up for video games and monster movies, but Scott never shows up. Sometimes he texts Stiles with a lame excuse a few hours later, but eventually Stiles does get the hint.

Stiles finds out about Allison via keen observation and the school rumor mill. He feels a little bit better because he’d have probably dropped Scott like a hot rock too if _he’d_ scored that far out of his league. At least he knows now and is prepared to wait out their honeymooner phase until Scott’s got enough blood flowing back to his brain to maintain two non-family relationships at the same time.

In the meantime he evaluates his options and, boy howdy, they are not many. There’s a reason Stiles and Scott were such a tight pair; it’s because the other option was being completely socially isolated and Scott is too much of a sweetheart to ever really care about the fact that Stiles is an asshole like 60% of the time. There are other losers in school that Stiles could chat up, but they tend to get a little wild-eyed and overwhelmed looking as soon as he opens his mouth.

The lacrosse team doesn’t have much use for him outside of warming the bench. Jackson likes using him as a punching bag and keeps asking a lot of weird leading questions about Scott, especially about Scott’s newfound sports prowess. Stiles thinks maybe he’d tell Jackson where that came from if he had _any_ freaking clue. The idea that Scott’s using steroids seems ludicrous on the surface, but the evidence is piling up in front of his eyes. How far _would_ Scott go to impress his girl?

Stiles is pretty sure he doesn’t want to know.

Greenberg is right out because, _Jesus_ , Stiles may not have many standards but he’s not _that_ desperate. Isaac Lahey is on the team, but he’s got this ‘please don’t ask me questions’ vibe going on at all times that sort of shuts down any friendly overtures before they can even get started. Then there’s Erica Reyes who Stiles knows of sort of kind of tangentially from Chemistry and gym, but he knows exactly zilch about girls and that one time he tried to say ‘hi’ in the hallway she got this wide-eyed fragile look like her bones had been replaced by glass rods. Like one wrong word would shatter her forever and that is power Stiles never wants to have over _anyone_. Just …God _no_. He is the worst person to have that kind of responsibility _ever_.

There’s a kid by the name of Boyd who’s been sitting alone at lunch since the fourth grade who tolerates Stiles okay. Boyd doesn’t talk much so he has no idea whether he’s annoying the shit out of the guy or not, but Stiles has like _mad respect_ for him now. He ate alone for three days before he finally spotted Boyd at an empty table and took his tray over. Eating alone? It is not so much fun, no.

That lasts until about halfway through the school year, after the weird after-hours fire where one of the janitors got murdered and the week where Laura Hale’s little brother was on the run from the law. He’s exonerated, barely, but earns himself a place on the ‘usual suspects’ list that Stiles’ dad will never admit to keeping. Poor bastard can’t catch a break.

Anyway, maybe Jackson’s drug theory has weight to it or there is a contaminant in the water supply now because everyone is going fucking _loco_.

Erica and Isaac are the first ones to change. Isaac is suddenly in everyone’s face, keying lockers in the hallway, strutting around in freaking _leather_ during the late summer in _California_ , and high as shit on _something_ with Erica riding shotgun alongside him. Erica’s glass bones have been replaced with tungsten steel and whatever they’re using has cleared the _heck_ out of her complexion. Stiles would have never guessed that she was hiding a rack that spectacular under her fuck-off sweats, but he’s well aware of it _now_. He keeps getting a front row view whenever she passes by him in the cafeteria. Once or twice she’s stolen food right off his tray in front of him and he was too busy picking his jaw up off the floor to stop her.

It doesn’t really feel personal, though, until Boyd shows up to school in his own leather jacket and starts sitting with Erica and Isaac without so much as a backwards glance.

Stiles doesn’t put the pieces together until he just happens to overhear a phone conversation between his dad and one of the guys on Beacon Hill’s pathetic excuse for a vice squad where they’re discussing Derek Hale’s gang of under-aged kids. They’d suspect Derek of being a dealer except for the part where there no _actual_ increase of drug trafficking in town that they can identify.

After that it makes a bit more sense. It’d be dangerous for them, hanging out with the Sheriff’s kid.

He starts playing a lot more World of Warcraft and other online multiplayer games until his dad starts getting visibly worried about the amount of time Stiles has been spending inside. After that he starts packing his PSP with him and driving out to wherever he can get some privacy, stretched out on the hood of his Jeep in the sunlight. He comes home a little bit more tanned and his dad feels better.

Then the station shooting happens and Stiles has too much on his mind what with his dad _nearly dying_ and all. He spends most of his summer home whenever his dad is, mostly just keeping him within sight. They watch a lot of baseball and Mythbusters while his dad mends and Stiles reconsiders a lot of his life choices.

Junior year starts out with Scott joining the leather triplets at their table during lunch instead of vanishing off to God knows where and Stiles finally gives up. He _really_ gives up when Jackson and Lydia join them, which probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise because those two have been acting like they’re both from _Mars_ for months now.

‘College will be better’ is the great lie that all social rejects tell themselves in high school and Stiles has never subscribed to that sort of ‘someday’ logic, but by all that’s holy there isn’t a lot that wouldn’t be improved in his life by a fresh start somewhere else.

He’s fully prepared to stick out the last year and a half of mandatory education, concentrating all his efforts on polishing the shit out of his college applications, so (of course) that is when he gets kidnapped by werewolves.

 

* * *

 

You’d _think,_ living as he does in California, Stiles would never have to deal with bad weather and that would be true if he lived in one of the southerly coastal bits of the state. Beacon Hills is about as far north as you can get in North California without _actually_ edging over into Oregon. There’s worse winter weather, he’s sure, but Beacon Hills is still the least California-y part of California he can think of.

He’s huddled up in a marshmallow jacket the color of a grape jelly belly in the IGA parking lot loading groceries into the back of his Jeep when this _smokin’_ 1966 Pontiac GTO pulls up into the spot next to his. It’s like a _classic_ muscle car and Stiles is almost too busy scraping his jaw up off the asphalt to notice the breathtakingly hot guy driving it and his equally-sizzling co-pilot.

(Seriously, what is up with the baseline for physical beauty in this town? Stiles is _this_ close to getting a complex because of people like Derek Hale fucking up the curve. As it is, Stiles feels like he’s going to have to either get a gym membership or reconsider his chosen plaid lifestyle just to keep up.)

“Nice ride, man.” Stiles says because the guy isn’t getting out of his car, but has the window rolled down and is smiling at him with even dazzling white teeth that he had to have mugged a celebrity for. It’s probably where he got those artistically tousled blonde locks and giant baby-blues from too.

“Thanks.” He says. “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to be Gwystyl Stilinski, would you?” He mispronounces Gwystyl as ‘Gwee-sty-el’, but it proves he’s at least seen it spelled correctly. Most people haven’t and thus try to write it down phonetically, which -given the vowel and consonant shifts in Welsh- is an exercise in humiliation.

“It’s Gwystyl.” Stiles corrects him.

“ _Gesundheit_.” The hot asshole responds.

Oh, ha _ha_. Funny man. Stiles has totally _never_ heard that one before. _Not_.

“I go by Stiles.” He says with a tight smile. “Did you need something? Because, I gotta say, if it gets to the point where I have to pick between my pint of Chunky Munky melting and talking to you, you’re not giving me a lot of motivation to choose you over the ice cream. Just sayin’, brah.”

“The librarian said you had a mouth on you.” The guy observes. “I didn’t realize she meant it both figuratively _and_ literally.”

“The librarian? Mrs. Abkolyos?” Stiles can feel his brow crinkle up. “Why’d she send you to find me? Did you piss her off or something because, I don’t know if you know this, but I don’t actually _work_ at the library. It’s kind of this thing they have; the not hiring of people who don’t actually have a library science degree. Or any degree at all yet.”

“You do a lot of work with their private manuscript collection though.” The guy says and it’s not even a question, like he already knows and is just looking for confirmation.

“Yeeeeeeeeaah?” Stiles allows. “Still not seeing where this is going.”

“Just impressive, is all. You look pretty young to be working with Latin and archaic French documents.”

“Excellence knows no age.” Stiles can’t quite keep the biting sarcasm out of his voice. This isn’t the first time someone’s given him grief about his age. The Beacon Hills librarians curate a lot of private collections that have been opened up to the public and the archives attract a lot of out of town scholars. The actual doctors are fine. They don’t give a rat’s back end about Stiles poking around the stacks. The grad students and fucking post-docs, though, _they’re_ a pain in his ass.

The fact of the matter is that Stiles has a head for languages and always has. His mom was tri-lingual and tended to bounce back and forth between Welsh, Russian, and English without paying much attention. His dad tells people that Stiles’ first word was ‘cookie’, but it was actually ‘Печенья’. Stiles picked up modern French during AP classes in middle school and takes – _used_ to take Latin during the summers so he could sit behind Lydia Martin in class.

God knows it’s not like he has friends to hang out with anymore so he plays around with old encyclopedias and medieval bestiaries. Folklore was his first love after all. It’s the perfect ex. It always lets him in when he comes crawling back to it drunk and maudlin at three in the morning.

“What, did you need help with a translation?” Stiles guesses. He’s done that kind of thing a couple of times now, mostly for out-of-towners who needed a quick and dirty translation done that couldn’t be entrusted to Babelfish. “My rates are pretty reasonable, but… uh… you don’t look like my usual sort of client.”

“I’m really not.” The guy smiles wider and it turns out his pretty white teeth aren’t so even after all. They’re actually all sort of jagged and sharp … like… like _fangs_ … “My friends and I, though, we _do_ need a researcher. Someone with your skill set.” Now his eyes start to glow a deep ruby red. “Someone whose dad works nights and won’t be missed for a couple of days.”

Hands clamp down on Stiles’ upper arms like twin vice grips and when he thrashes against them it’s like trying to get a fucking boulder to ease up. He didn’t even notice Blonde Guy’s friend sneaking up behind him. Another hand smothers his attempt to yell for help as he’s manhandled (literally!) into the back of an honest-to-god _white van_. There are people waiting inside, all of whom have the same glowing red eyes, who receive him with open arms and a pair of handcuffs.

“It’s all right, Stiles.” One of them, a woman with wavy brown hair and nails like fucking claws… no wait, they really are _actual claws_ , traces the line of his face with the back of her hand. “You’re with us now and we take care of our toys.” She says as she presses a strip of duct tape down over his mouth.

“Mostly.” Her friend, a black man with skin like polished jet, adds as the van starts up. “Sometimes we break them if we aren’t careful.”

“Yes.” The woman allows. “That is true.”

 

* * *

 

They set him up in the coziest little prison cell you’ve ever seen. It’s an 11x15 poured cement room with vents a cat wouldn’t fit through and a solid steel plate door. There’s a double bed bolted to the floor and someone put in carpet to take some of the chill off. He’s even got a treadmill and a pull-up bar for workouts. Most importantly there’s a tablet PC sitting out and shelves upon shelves of books.

Stiles picks one off the shelf and finds it’s a copy of _Livre des Creatures_ in the original French, which… okay. He’s pretty sure that was never printed as a mass market paperback. Sure enough there’s no copyright information when he checks the first few inside pages, just the watermark of a private press. The pages are actually high-res photographs of the original illuminated manuscript.

These guys, whoever they are, apparently put some thought and major cash into this.

“You guys couldn’t have kidnapped one of the asshole post-docs in from Berkley?” He complains to the blonde guy, who is sitting outside his cell door and paging through a copy of Consumers Digest. He is apparently looking into buying a set of outdoor speakers, although to what end Stiles isn’t sure he wants to know. “I’m pretty sure you could keep one for months and no one would notice until they missed a meeting with their advisor and even then it would be a 50-50 shot.”

“I considered it.” Blond Guy says and turns a page in his magazine. “…but after listening to one bitch about proper historiography for a quarter of an hour I decided to go with the talented amateur instead. For the record, I do not give a shit if you properly cite your sources and I will not be requiring a bibliography along with your reports.”

“Oh, well, that clears up all my fears.” Stiles paces back and forth. Manic energy is bubbling up inside his chest cavity and unless he bleeds a little of it off, he thinks he’s probably looking down the barrel of a panic attack.

“Glad to be of assistance.” The magazine pages rustle again, but Stiles isn’t looking. “I suppose it’s too late to ask, but are you claustrophobic?”

“Yeah, it is definitely too late to be asking that question.” Stiles snipes back. “No, I am not. I don’t know what kind of phobic I am because there isn’t really a convenient Latin root-word that properly encapsulates my current _kidnapped-by-werewolves_ state.”

“Luposlipaphobia?” Blonde Guy has his magazine closed when Stiles turns to gawp at him and then shrugs. “It could be a legitimate concern, given present circumstances.”

“Great.” Stiles grouses. “Wolfy’s got _jokes_.”

“I do try.” He pauses and cocks his head as though he’s listening to something only he can hear. “Ah, good. I have your first research project for you.”

“My first _what_?” Stiles replies flatly.

“The reason we kidnapped you, Stiles, try and keep up.” Blonde Guy says. “There is a creature called a Kanima. Use the resources we’ve given you and tell us everything you can about it.”

“… and if I don’t?” Stiles asks.

“If you don’t then you aren’t useful to us.” Blonde Guy flicks his claws out and considers the pale porcelain length of them. “You understand, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” Stiles swallows on a throat gone dry. “Crystalline.”

“Good boy.”

 

* * *

 

The Kanima is Stiles’ first ghost to chase through the stacks. There isn’t a lot of information on it, but Stiles tracks down a few useful references in a collection of older texts, all of them handwritten by someone with the world’s worst penmanship and an abusive relationship with vowels, and records them. Some of the books in his tiny library are useless to him, especially it seems the ones he needs most.

“Look, I don’t read or speak Creolese.” Stiles tells Chase (Blonde Guy) the next morning. “I’ve found some mentions of a shape shifting bogeyman or whatever in South America, but they’re offhand references at best.”

“It’s something.” Chase shrugs his expansive shoulders. “Just do what you can.”

So Stiles compiles his data and is annoyed that the material on its own is actually pretty interesting. Mind you, there’s no real agreement on what a Kanima looks like or behaves beyond the fact that it targets murderers. Stiles found some hints in the literature (mainly in those old handwritten notes that read like a spotter’s guide) that it’s some kind of werewolf mutate, but the reasoning is something about deep personal conflict and seems like a load of hocus pocus mumbo jumbo to Stiles …but then again, up until a few days ago he would have said the same thing about werewolves.

He does make a bibliography, but mainly for himself because he finds himself going back to his texts two or three times and after a while they start bleeding together. He hands the sheaf of papers to Chase through the slot in his door they use to feed him.

“Good work.” Chase praises him an hour later once he’s had a chance to flip through it. “This is very useful. You get to live for a bit longer.” He smiles with those broad white teeth and Stiles shudders. “Get some sleep. Miranda will be by with your dinner in a bit. You’ve earned it.”

Miranda, a lithe red-head with skin like translucent silk, does show up with a tray not an hour and a half later. It’s got a nice cut of steak on it with a baked potato on the side and a pile of sweet baby peas, which is a change up from the ham-and-pickle sandwiches he’s been living off of up until now.

“It’s a reward.” She tells him and cracks open a beer that she pours into a proper -albeit plastic- glass for him so he can’t get his hands on the bottle and break it for use as a weapon. “Keep up the good work.”

The steak is perfectly rare on the inside and well-rested, barely oozing out any juices onto his plate. It’s the sort of steak his dad would commit a felony for and Stiles can’t bear to touch it. He ends up only eating the potato and green beans.

“Not a fan of red meat?” Miranda guesses when she comes to collect the tray. “Poor baby. Next time we’ll get you something else.”

Stiles rolls himself up in the duvet on his bed and pretends he’s anywhere but here.

 

* * *

 

It goes like that for …a while, really. Stiles loses track of time in his cell because the lights are never off and it’s throwing his internal clock for a loop.

Chase will show up to tell Stiles what to research. Stiles does the research and sometimes is able to request stuff he needs. The tablet’s got a VPN connection to some useful databases and the pack (they call themselves that) buy him licenses for more. The internet, however, is locked up tighter than his ability to hack into it will allow. If he does well –and he usually does- then Miranda brings him a nice dinner afterwards. After the steak fiasco it tends to be some sort of fatty home style dish and a bit of illicit alcohol otherwise they’re very careful about his diet. Stiles ends up eating a lot of light flaky fish and gently steamed vegetables. Miranda installs a sunlamp and someone makes him sit in front of it for thirty minutes every day.

Sometimes one of the Pack will come down to talk to him. Usually it’s Hunt, Chase’s hamfisted bro, who was the one to literally grab Stiles out of that ill-fated parking lot.

From Hunt Stiles gleans a few rare shreds of information about what’s going on in the outside world and what the Pack wants with Beacon Hills.

Long story short; the Pack wants jack all to do with Beacon Hills. They’re here on other business (no word yet on what that is) but things keep trying to _eat_ them and the local werewolves native to the area don’t seem to be real keen on helping them out.

“That might be because Chase captured some of the local Alpha’s beta wolves first off.” Hunt allows. “We thought they were a pair of omegas trying to form a substitute pack. We gave them back.” He says. “ _Eventually_. We just wanted information on what the fuck the _Argents_ are doing in town is all.”

Given what Stiles knows the pack is capable of doing in the name of gathering intel, Stiles is pretty sure that the local Alpha (whoever he is) has a legitimate grievance with Chase’s mutts.

Stiles has no idea who the Argents are and Hunt doesn’t explain when he asks.

He’s been there for a couple of weeks he thinks when everything goes to hell in a handbasket.

 

* * *

 

Stiles is catnapping, rolled up in his duvet like the world’s largest taquito with his head sticking out one end and his feet out the other when Chase throws the door to his cell open and grabs him by the scruff.

“Put your shoes on.” He snarls. “We’re leaving.”

“Leaving, wha…” Stiles is tossed in the direction of his clothes. “Okay! Okay! I’m getting dressed.” He struggles into to a pair of pants and one of the dopey sweaters Miranda bought him when his own clothes got to be too worn looking. He’s tying the laces on his shoes when something rocks the building they’re in and chase lets out a growl.

“Those psychotic sons of bitches.” He mutters. “They’re using explosives in the middle of goddamn _downtown_? Come on. We need to leave.” He grabs Stiles’ marshmallow coat in one hand and literally (literally!) tosses Stiles over his shoulder.

They leave not a moment too soon because Stiles sees guys with guns in urban camo rounding the corner just as Chase bolts for one of the side exits. They sure as hell don’t look like SWAT. If they’re surprised by the site of Chase with a hostage he doesn’t see any sign of it. In fact his presence doesn’t seem to be slowing anyone down _at all_ and soon bullets are whizzing through the air while Stiles keeps his head down and covered with his hands like that’s going to help.

He’s pale and shaking when Chase crams him into the back of the GTO and guns the engine. Stiles stays there in the cramped backseat curled on his side because he’s afraid that if he sits up he’s going to catch a bullet in the brain. He doesn’t dare speak until he hasn’t heard a gunshot for nearly thirty minutes.

“Who were they?” He asks.

“Hunters.” Chase says tersely. “Bunch of crazy-ass bastards on a holy mission to kill all the monsters plus whoever gets in their way.” He’s silent for a second. “Tell me you’re not having a panic attack back there, kid.”

“I can handle it.” …and, God, he sounds like he’s freaking _twelve_. Stiles’ voice is ringing in his ears as his vision goes gray and foggy around the edges. He concentrates on breathing in and breathing out until his eyes start to clear up and it’s not so hard to inhale. “I’ve _got_ it.”

“Good.” Chase growls.

Stiles lets himself go limp and tries not to stare at the familiar scenery passing by the window. Instead he occupies himself with plans for exactly how he’s going to use this opportunity for escape.

 

* * *

 

The Pack meets up at a burnt out old house in the woods and it actually takes Stiles the better part of an hour to realize that they’re out at the old Hale place.

Stiles has only seen Derek Hale once in person and that was at a distance at the station when his dad hauled the guy in as a murder suspect, but even so he did not look like the sort of person who would appreciate squatters in the tragic remnants of his family home.

They don’t linger and Stiles is bracketed on either side by Chase and Hunt at all times. He forces himself to stay patient. Their attention will lapse eventually and when it does he is going to be so, _so_ gone …but the Pack heads deeper and deeper into the woods until Stiles is pretty sure they’re well into the preserve, far enough that he’s never going to find his way out alone.

Chase finds a gutted-out cabin and they stash Stiles there, handcuffing him to a dead radiator in the main room. Mirada tucks him into his coat with perverse care. “You’ll be safe here for now, Puppy.” She tells him and that’s a new nickname. He hopes it’s not indicative of anything, but his hopes are dashed when Emily sticks her head in through the door.

“Someone should bite him.” She says. “It’s going to freeze tonight and he’s _slow_. He’ll hold us back tomorrow.”

“No one is biting him.” Miranda says with an undercurrent of a snarl in her voice. “A healthy human is faster than a new werewolf fighting his first change.”

“For the record, I would rather not be bitten, thanks. Because clearly that was an oblique way of asking for my input on the matter.” Stiles holds up his free hand like he’s answering a question in class. “The magically growing sideburns? Yeah, probably not a good look on me I’m guessing.”

“That’s enough, Pup.” Miranda says and they leave him alone, which is really a big mistake on their part.

Given all the times in his life growing up that he’s accidentally chained himself to something while playing with a pair of his dad’s handcuffs picking the locks on one is second nature to him.

Maybe it’s indicative of how distracted an unsettled the Pack is that he manages to get out of the cuffs and fair distance away from the cabin before the first howl goes up in the distance. Ice shoots through Stiles’ veins as he puts on an extra burst of speed. He may well literally be running for his life now.

His imagination paints dark bestial shadows flickering in-between the trees, pacing him as he runs, but there are no eyes gleaming in the darkness like hot coals so he knows it’s just his imagination giving him more incentive to _get the fuck out_ of the creepy forest. As if he needed it.

Sound works weirdly in the woods and Stiles is half afraid he’s gotten turned around because there are more howls in the distance, but they sound like they’re coming from in _front_ of him. He’s been using the waxing moon hanging heavy overhead to navigate so he knows he’s been going in more or less of a straight line with some wavering around to try and break his trail, but Stiles is not a predator (even if he’s a stubborn little cuss) so he doesn’t register it in time when one of the flickers in his peripheral vision turns out to be real and tackles him full on from the side.

“ _AAAUGH_!” He gets out two-thirds of a scream before a hand (too small to belong to one of the pack his brain supplies in bone-shattering relief) clamps over his mouth and a voice –a voice he _knows_.

“Stiles!” Scott pins him down effortlessly with one hand and Stiles stares up at him, trying to mentally erase the yellowy-orange glow from his former best friend’s eyes. “Be quiet or they’ll _hear you_.”

Werewolf. Scott is a _werewolf_ and that means Boyd’s one too and Isaac and Erica and that all means Derek Hale is dealing something a _lot_ more serious than weed.

Stiles wrenches his mouth free and hisses right back. “They’re tracking me by scent, dumbass. Let me up!”

“You crossed a barrier ten meters back.” Scott drags him to his feet. “It’ll break your trail, but not if you keep running in a straight line. We need to go another way.” He takes a breath, inhaling the damp evening air. “That way.” He points and Stiles takes a look at the sky. Taurus is out tonight and more or less in the direction Scott is pointing in. He pauses and grips the back of Stiles’ neck. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you alive, man.”

There’s a lot Stiles could say to it, but it all sounds whiny and butt-hurt even in his head where such things usually sound perfectly plausible. “Me too.” He grunts. “Tell me you have backup.”

Scott grins. “Oh man, I have _so_ got backup.”

A chorus of howls light up the night sounding brighter and younger than the red-eyed contingent. Scott tilts his head, listening. “That sounds like the others. I bet they met the guys chasing you. Come on, they’ll slow your pursuit down enough so we can get you out of reach.” He grabs Stiles by the wrist and starts to pull him away.

He never sees Miranda hit him.

They’re lucky, in a way. From what little Stiles has seen, Miranda has the lightest and most agile Alpha form of the entire pack. What she lacks in pure brute strength she makes up for in accuracy. She’s fucking lethal and even Chase doesn’t cross her without a good reason.

None of that is very comforting when she drops out of the tree cover and slams Scott into the dirt. She picks Stiles up with one hand and throws him across the clearing. Scott surges up once, wolfed-out and snarling, but she slams his head back down onto the ground and he goes still.

Too still.

“Scott!” Stiles scrambles to his feet but is brought up short as Miranda holds up on clawed finger in a silent little ‘ _ah-ah-ah_!’ shake. She’s got her other hand curled around Scott’s throat with her talons poised just above his jugular. The fur melts off her body leaving her pale and nude in the moonlight, but the claws remain.

“He’s alive, puppy.” She says with a narrow smile. “For now.”

“Please.” Stiles chokes the word out and it tastes like ashes. “ _Don’t._ ”

“Oh, I don’t plan to.” Miranda says (caressing Scott’s pulse with her index finger) and tilts her head. “Because you’re too smart to force my hand. I like that about you. It’s rare and worth taking care of.” Her smile grows about two shades warmer as she reaches out to caress Stiles’ face, trailing her razor-tipped fingers down his cheek without so much as scratching him. “It’s been a long time since I had anything to take care of.”

It’s less cute when she grasps him by the back of the neck and slams his head into the hard ground.

 

* * *

 

 

He wakes up in a concrete tunnel that bears an eerie similarity to a subway tunnel except for the complete lack of train tracks and the hobo signs scrawled on walls.

There’s some sign of prolonged occupation that Stiles, as the child of a law enforcement officer, has learned to look for; cigarette butts, discarded water bottles, soot on the ceiling from camp fires gone by, and old footprints. No one’s been here recently –no one except Miranda it seems and she’s set up the beginnings of a cozy little den.

“I know you’re awake, Pup.” She says without turning away from the little one-ring camp stove she has set up on a little pallet of cinderblocks. She’s frying something in the pan. It smells like yet more fish. She likes to make a sauce out of the oil with butter, lemon juice, and capers. If Stiles ever gets home then he’s going to let his dad live off of hamburgers and milkshakes if he wants because now he knows what it’s like to literally be held hostage by health food.

Stiles flails his way out a sleeping bag that is still redolent of eau du Walmart only to be brought up short by the chain around his neck.

“Really?” He asks Miranda. “Really, seriously?”

“Really.” She agrees with an indulgent little smile and tips a filet of trout onto a plastic plate full of couscous, garnishes it with some more capers, and pours him a quarter-solo cup of white wine. Miranda is a firm believer in the health benefits of good wine, which is about the only benefit she’ll ever reap from it considering her enhanced metabolism. “Oh don’t pout.” She tells him. “It won’t hold you forever and by then you won’t need it.”

Stiles tugs on the chain and follows it to where it’s been bolted securely into the wall. “You think I can break out of this?” He asks dubiously.

“Not now.” She replies and sets his plate down on the floor by his bedding. She hasn’t cooked for herself, but she never does. He made the mistake of asking if she always ate like this and she’d only smiled with long sharp teeth before saying she preferred to catch her own meals. “Probably not tomorrow either, but when the moon rises full then it won’t matter anymore.”

Full… Stiles realizes what she’s talking about and scrambles to pull his shirt up looking for wherever it is that she bit him. There’s no wound visible and he’s about to go rooting in his shirt when Miranda stops him.

“Look at that, it’s already healed.” She smiles at him like he did something clever and nevermind the sick feeling growing in the pit of his stomach. “I knew you’d change beautifully. I knew it the moment Hunt pointed you out to us on the street; so bright, so clever, so _lonely_.” Her smile turns bittersweet. “This is a new start for both of us, puppy. You’re my first beta, but I have such plans.”

“Where does Chase figure into these plans?” Stiles gulps. “It doesn’t look like you set this up with his say so.”

“Chase isn’t an issue –or won’t be.” Miranda shrugs. “Either Hale will kill him or Deucalion will. He’s finally irritated his betters beyond the point where his usefulness will protect him. We were sent to investigate the death of Laura Hale. It’s been a year and still we have no answers because the first thing Chase did was alienate our best source of information. There will be blood now and I don’t intend for any of it to be ours.”

Deucalion isn’t a new name. Stiles has heard it before, but he’s never had the impression that the man (wolf?) was anywhere nearby or involved with the pack. He’s learned better than to ask about him though. The one and only time he’s been physically damaged by his captors is the time he tried to get a little information out of Hunt. Chase arrived in time to stop him, but Hunt nearly snapped Stiles’ neck like a twig.

“Eat your food.” Miranda directs him and Stiles is disgusted to realize that his hands start moving without his conscious input. “You’ll need the extra protein over the next few days. Then rest and sleep the night through.”

He doesn’t plan on obeying, but Miranda’s orders must have a supernatural element of compulsion because as soon as Stiles clears his plate his eyes go hot and heavy. He only meant to close them for a few seconds, but by the time he opens them it’s morning.

\---and he has a new cell mate passed out shirtless on a camp cot next to him.

“Oh _fuck_ me.” He groans as the other turns his head towards Stiles.

Danny doesn’t look much like he’s slept rather he looks like he’s seen the Devil and who knows? Maybe he has.

 

* * *

 

“You look good for dead, Stilinski.” Danny croaks and winces. His handsome face is bruised along one cheek and he has deep shadows under his eyes that don’t look recent. Stiles isn’t too surprised by that. Danny was looking pale and drawn for a long time before the Pack nabbed him at the grocery store. Between Jackson and Lydia he’s been abandoned by his closest friends and Stiles can’t see them having gotten any saner since he last tuned in. The difference between Stiles and Danny is the fact that there will always be someone waiting to step into the holes in Danny’s life although that doesn’t seem to have been much of a comfort.

Stiles gropes around for a water bottle or something to give him, but ends up having to hold it up for Danny because his old classmate is cuffed to his bed in addition to being leashed to the wall with the same chains as Stiles.

“I’m not dead yet.” Stiles replies shakily. His head feels weird… his entire _body_ feels weird; like he’s eerily still or the world is still or something. It’s a bit reminiscent of the time his doctor tried to add mood stabilizers to his medication regimen only without the crushing chemical depression and absent libido. “Neither are you.”

“Well, you’re still alive after a month so maybe there’s hope yet.” Danny wets his lips. “I had the worst nightmare. There was this thing and it…” He trails off.

“It held you down and bit you?” Stiles guesses.

Danny stares at him in silence. “It wasn’t a dream.” He says at last.

“It wasn’t a dream.” Stiles confirms.

Danny turns his head away and breathes out a heavy little “ _Fuck_.” There doesn’t seem to be any reply to make to that so Stiles doesn’t try.

For some reason Stiles had some crazy idea that Miranda planned on moving them at some point, but he was wrong. She appears with food and feeds them with exquisite care, but not even Danny’s sweaty feverish shakes are enough to get her to budge on the location of their little den.

“He’d be like that no matter where we are, puppy.” She shrugs one slender shoulder as she watches Danny tremble on his cot with the most dispassionate affection Stiles has ever witnessed. Stiles has been directed to sit at her feet so she can trim his overgrown hair. So far this is the longest haircut he’s ever had the misfortune to sit through. “He’ll die or he won’t. If conditions mattered then one of our forebears would have figured it out by now.”

“There has to be something.” Stiles flinches when she turns her brilliant red gaze on him, but digs his disconcertingly sharp nails into his thighs and endures it until she gives him another one of those gallic little shrugs.

“Be his pack.” She says at length. “It’s the only help there is.”

‘Be his pack’ is awfully vague and Miranda doesn’t get any more explicit. In fact she leaves again shortly thereafter, but she isn’t moving with the kind of dedicated purpose that means Stiles is going to wake up with another ‘packmate’ but rather the kind of lazy intent that means she’ll be back in a few hours with blood on her breath.

Stiles knows plenty about wolves from Animal Planet, which is just enough to know that he actually knows jack shit. Besides, werewolves don’t act much like wolves from what he’s been able to tell. Their ‘instincts’ aren’t all that canine at all. The best guess he’s ever managed is that their most basic impulses are similar to a wolf’s, but it all gets translated through a brain that evolved from critters that lived up trees and were into social grooming. Even the pack impulse is suspect; most primates live in tightly knit family groups with clear social hierarchies. The best natural comparison that Stiles has been able to draw for a werewolf is the baboon –not very flattering, but there you have it. Even then it’s not a perfect fit.

So it’s not with wolves in mind that Stiles pulls all their blankets onto the floor and drags Danny into the world’s most ironically named puppy pile. The truth is he’s thinking about the effect human contact has on infants and young adults in those holistic journals Mrs. McCall likes to read. He’s thinking about keeping Danny thermoregulated and keeping an eye on his fever the only way he really can with constant skin to skin contact. He’s not thinking about scent marking or social bonding, but in retrospect that seems like it should have been obvious. All he knows at the time is that Danny sleeps better and easier with someone else in the bed. He shakes less and doesn’t call out for people who can’t hear him in his sleep.

He and Danny have never been friends. Danny’s only ever tolerated him at best, but he’s always been nice even when he didn’t have to be; even when Stiles had to have been working on his last nerve and anyone else would have lashed out. Danny never went for the cheap shot and Stiles respected him for it.

Besides, Stiles isn’t too proud to admit that a little cuddle action isn’t welcome on his end –although the proud glow on Miranda’s face when she comes back to the den to see them huddled together in a blanket nest burns him deep inside.

Danny wakes on the third day with brilliant yellow-gold eyes and judging by the grimace on his face Stiles isn’t looking much better.

 


	6. Wind in the East

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek announces his return to Beacon Hills like this:
> 
> “Are you living in your fucking Jeep?” Snarls the blue-eyed fanged menace crouched on the hood of Stiles’ car.

Derek announces his return to Beacon Hills like this:

“ _Are you living in your fucking Jeep?_ ” Snarls the blue-eyed fanged menace crouched on the hood of Stiles’ car.

“GAAAAAAH!” Stiles replies in a deliberate and well-considered manner. He absolutely does not send cold curly fries flying in all directions nor does he clutch at his non-existent pearls like someone’s aging grandmother. “… _Derek?_ ”

“Are you _living_ in your fucking _Jeep?_ ” Derek repeats himself and swings down from his perch to stomp around to the driver’s side where he can menace Stiles up close and in person without going through the windshield.

This would be more effective if Stiles weren’t so genuinely _happy_ to see his grumpy-ass face. Because Derek’s been gone, totally incommunicado, since last Fall. They figured out after a while that the first thing he did was chuck his phone out a window. All calls made to his number went straight to voicemail for a while until one day someone picked up and it turned out to be a homeless guy in Mount Shasta.

Derek looks good for someone Stiles had been 83% sure was probably dead and likely at the hands of Gerard’s displaced henchgoons. They roamed the area surrounding Beacon Hills for a few months hassling loners and vagrants, anyone who looked just a little off, until Allison was distracted enough from her grief over her mom to arrange a hunting trip of a different variety with her dad.

Actually, Derek looks good _period_. He’d started pulling himself together a bit over the summer prior to everything going to shit with the Alpha pack; buying shirts in colors other than ‘gray’ and ‘puke’, getting an apartment with very nearly all four walls and an intact roof, putting _furniture_ in it, _using_ said furniture. Apparently the Renaissance of Derek kept going because he’s put on a little weight –still ripped as hell- but the angles and planes of his face have softened like he maybe has been eating things with actual fat content. Stiles wishes he could say the same.

He feels dirty all of a sudden. School’s out for a long weekend so he hasn’t been able to grab a shower and while cash hasn’t been a real problem, finding quarters for the laundromat has been. By mutual agreement, Stiles has been rationing his time at Scott’s house because A. too much Stiles and Melissa McCall develops this nervous tick underneath her left eye and B. they’re pretty sure she would actually murder Stiles’ dad if she got wind of what was going on. He’s been rotating through couches and guest rooms, but some nights (like tonight) there’s nowhere he can stay and ends up parked in a quiet part of the Preserve with a pile of blankets and some battered paperbacks for when he can’t sleep. Say what you will about print media, but at least books don’t need to be charged every eight hours.

Stiles opens his mouth and Derek, who developed a pretty good radar for inbound bullshit last year, reaches in through the open window, gets him by the collar, and drags him halfway out the window up to Derek’s very unamused eyelevel. Stiles folds like a bad poker hand.

“Witches did something to my dad!” He blurts out as he scrabbles for purchase. Actually he doesn’t need a grip on anything, Derek’s hold on him is rock solid and the only way he’s going to fall is if Derek drops him. While Derek and Stiles do have a history of violence between them (Derek physical and Stiles verbal) they’re both usually good at not inflicting lasting damage.


	7. Things to Know About Living with Werewolves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Living with werewolves is actually kind of a problem. Here are some reasons why.

**1\. Pack means never having to move your own furniture.**

Hale House is declared finished on a lazy summer evening when Scott breaks a bottle of wine against the edge of the newly completed deck out back and Derek nearly kills him because the stain isn’t dry yet. Despite all that, it’s a good evening. Isaac and Boyd put together a bonfire and Allison (who defies gender roles on a regular basis and is a fantastic pit master) debuts her latest foray into the realm of vension BBQ.

It’s taken three years of contractors, DIY, and more of Derek’s insurance payout than anyone’s ever felt comfortable asking about but the house is done and it’s a sprawling multi-story beast with eight bedrooms, nine and a half bathrooms, and a dungeon that would make the Dark Ages weep bitter tears of inadequacy.

Privately, Stiles thinks that eight bedrooms is sort of excessive but it’s not his house and he doesn’t have to worry about future generations of werebabies. Considering the way Scott and Allison go at it, this is perhaps a legitimate concern on Derek’s part.

The party goes until very nearly the next morning when Derek tenderly kicks them all out and tells them not to come back until their stuff is in boxes.

The pack disperses to their respective cars chattering about who gets which room and whether Scott deserves the room with the double closet because of Allison or if Erica’s shoe collection merits its own bedroom.

Stiles goes back to his Jeep alone and tries to ignore the way his heart is clenching –because this is _it_.

He’s known since the day they graduated highschool that the day was coming when he and the pack would go their separate ways. Stiles isn’t a werewolf and his role as pack mascot gets a lot less cute as the years go on. The feeling of belonging-but-not-quite is getting harder to swallow. This isn’t a sentiment of which Stiles is particularly proud so he stomps down on the drama-llama behavior and reminds himself that this is a good thing. This is the way things are supposed to be.

It’s not like they’ll stop being friends. Right?

… besides Stiles has concerns aplenty to occupy his mind. He’s just graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s in anthropology and is due to start a master’s degree in comparative folklore in the fall because he’s still _way_ too employable. He’s looking at a lot of future student debt and needs to keep his summer living costs down in order to squirrel some cash away, which is why he’s going to be living at home with his dad until it’s time to go back to the next camped loft in a long line of postage-stamp sized student apartments.

So it doesn’t matter that his friends are basically moving into what would be the world’s best frat house while he stays at home with his dad where the most exciting thing going on is a Mythbusters marathon on TV. It’s cool. _He’s_ cool.

 _Everyone is cool, dammit_.

He believes this right up until the point when he arrives home two weeks after the Pack’s housewarming party. His dad isn’t home because crime doesn’t exactly keep banker’s hours. Stiles drops his knapsack on the sofa and strips his work shirt off while he trots up the stairs for a change of clothes.

His room is empty of everything except a bare mattress frame when he pushes the door open.

Scott answers on the first ring. “ _Heeeey_! When did you get off work?” His voice has that loose happy quality to it that Stiles has long since learned to associate with a wolf who’s just gotten away with something. They’re worse than cats that way.

“ _Where the hell is my stuff._ ” It is not a question.

“It’s in your room.” Scott says like this is completely reasonable and it occurs to Stiles several years too late that Derek has been an AWFUL influence on his friend. “We just got done putting the bookshelves together and the girls are unpacking your books now. Boyd got a truck through work for the entire week and we’ve been moving everybody in now that the downstairs furniture is set up.”

“Since when am I moving in?! I’m going to be _gone_ in twelve weeks. I can’t afford an apartment in Berkley and pay Derek rent at the same time!” Stiles squawks.

“Who said anything about rent?” Scott sounds legitimately confused. “You’re _pack_.” He says it like that explains everything.

… and maybe it does because the breath leaves Stiles in one sudden gust, taking all his indignation with it. He’d just been assuming that Derek’s open invitation was ‘werewolf only’, which in retrospect? Kinda dumb.

Derek is guilty of a lot, but pointless exclusionary bullshit is not one of his (many) sins.

It turns out that they’ve put him on the third floor next to the master suite and Derek’s home office, which is a disaster waiting to happen because _stairs_ , but Stiles is willing to risk a few broken bones because someone went for broke and installed an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. His private research collection already takes up some two thirds of it.

“ _Dayum_ but that is a sexy, sexy sight.” Stiles slings an arm around Scott’s shoulders and the other around Allison’s waist.

“Stiles, they’re just books.” Scott tries, but Allison shushes him before he can really get going.

“Don’t listen to him.” She tells Stiles and runs her finger along the spines of ‘The Bestiary of Phillipe de Theon’ and ‘Livre de Creatures’, which were copies of the ones in her family’s manuscript vault. “Books furnish a room.”

Whatever moment they were having was abruptly ended by the sudden piercing shriek of the fire alarm and Scott perks up.

“Oh. Dinner’s ready!”

**2\. There is no such thing as ‘private business’.**

Stiles starts worrying when his award letter is officially a week late than the latest date the Financial Aid office said he would receive it. He’s gotten a few separate award letters from small scholarships, but nothing that approaches the amount of money he needs to attend school _and_ afford a place to live.

He finds it on Derek’s desk by complete accident when he goes into the office to make sure the windows are closed in there. All the wolves prefer a breeze to AC and there have been incidents in the past with delicate electronics left too close to an open window when the weather turns foul. It’s been threatening rain all day outside and judging by the rumble of thunder it’s about to start pouring.

The letter is sitting open on top of Derek’s macbook and Stiles only notices because he recognizes Berkley’s letterhead.

He finds Derek in the backyard locking up the greenhouse and covering up the delicate new growth in the vegetable garden so it isn’t flattened by the rain.

“Mind explaining why you have this?” Stiles holds out his award letter in between his index and middle fingers, like Gambit showing off a card. Part of him wants to turn this into some big confrontation, but that’s not a part of him that really deserves the airtime.

Derek looks at the paper and just shrugs. _Shrugs_. Like it’s not a big deal. “I had to know how much money to move around.” He says and turns back to where he’s tamping a glass cloche down over a head of frisse cabbage.

“I…” Words fail Stiles and that is a rare thing. It doesn’t last long. “What are you talking about?”

“The pack is footing the bill for your degree.” Derek tilts his head and something like humor glimmers in his eye. “So try not to lose your scholarships.”

Stiles gapes. “Wha… WHY? _Why would you do that_?”

“Why would the pack benefit from a formally trained folklorist?” Derek sits back on his heels. He’s grinning now because the smug bastard likes nothing more than yanking Stiles’ chain. “We’ll pay for your education. In return you work for us or any other pack who needs you instead of bouncing around the country looking for tenure.”

“So… what. This is an investment?” Stiles purses his lips. His mind is working furiously trying to parse this down. While he no longer has the direct shunt between his brain and mouth that turned his teenaged years into one prolonged bout of verbal diarrhea it’s still a frightening place inside his head with his thoughts whirling from topic to topic almost too fast for him to catch hold of. Talking to Derek always makes it ten times worse.

“Of a sort.” There’s something about Derek’s expression when he says that. It’s in the way his gaze slides to the left and he shrugs one shoulder.

Stiles crosses his arms over his chest. “This is a territory thing.” It makes sense. Beacon Hills has a lot to offer, but job opportunities for a graduate student are few and far between. Once he actually gets his degree then the local options will evaporate. The nearest community college is two hours away and has no use for an anthropologist whatsoever. “You guys don’t want me getting too far away.”

“That too.” Derek frowns and stares into the middle distance visibly hunting for his words. “We’re crippled in a way. Werewolves aren’t scholars. We keep family histories and stories, but we don’t share information the way hunters do. My family’s library was destroyed in the fire and many of our oral histories died with Peter. He was the family memory keeper. The ancestors can’t help us anymore, but you can.” He shakes his head and corrects himself. “You _have_.”

“Of course I have and I won’t stop just because I’m living somewhere else.” Stiles crouches down next to Derek and edges closer because this is brushing up against a topic he’s been meaning to bring up since the day he walked into his dad’s house to find his bedroom empty. “You don’t have to pay my tuition or get Scott to steal my stuff. You guys and my dad are all I have in the world. That’s not going to change.”

“I know it won’t.” Derek says it like an Alpha, like he’s well aware that Stiles would never consider choosing anything over the pack. He’s not _wrong_ , but Stiles could have lived without Derek ever being aware of it. “But we can’t afford to have you in a position where you have to choose between pack concerns and your career.”

Stiles winces as a rain drop hits him in the cheek and his attention is diverted towards the darkening sky. Derek’s hand closes around his shoulder and the older man urges him to his feet.

“Inside.” Derek propels him towards the kitchen door with a hand in the small of Stiles’ back and it’s bizarre the difference four short years have made. Stiles can remember a time when he would have (and has)balked at being pushed around by the big bag wolf, but now it just feels like home… right down to the part where Scott’s making out with Allison in the kitchen when they get inside.

Stiles rolls up his award letter and uses it to smack Scott upside the back of his head.

“Pack it up, McCall.” He says as Allison yelps and hops down off the counter with blazing cheeks. “People eat in here.”

“Tell that to Erica and Boyd.” Scott rubs the back of his head as he cheerfully throws his pack mates under the bus. “I caught them on the kitchen table last night.”

And… wow. That was something Stiles could have gone his entire life without knowing about. “You know what, Derek. I’ve reconsidered. Hunting tenure on the other side of the country is sounding pretty good right now.”

“Too late. I already mailed a check to Berkley.” Derek rumbles and shoots a half-glare at Scott and Allison. “I didn’t think this was going to have to be a house rule, but apparently I was mistaken. The next couple I catch outside of a bedroom gets to run the borders by themselves for a month.”

Allison mouths ‘sorry’ at Stiles over Scott’s shoulder as her boyfriend salutes and leaves to spread the word.

“Why’s she apologizing to _me_?” Stiles wonders out loud, but Derek is already gone.

Oh well, it’s probably not that important.

**3\. Personal boundaries are an illusion.**

“You smell wrong.” Isaac bitches as Stiles staggers into the kitchen in search of a glass of water.

It’s the first actual day of Stiles’ fall break and he has literally been back for fifteen minutes after a four hour drive. His suitcase is still in the back of the Jeep and he’s got an inbox full of email from highstrung undergrads, all of whom have inadvisably conflated their self-worth with their GPAs and feel that diligent whining will make him reveal the mystical formula for an instant A on their midterms. So perhaps the withering glare he levels on the man can be excused. In any event, it goes right over Isaac’s head because he’s too busy ducking into the laundry room to notice.

They have a problem, however, when he turns up thirty seconds later with what appears to be one of his dirty t-shirts. “Put that on.” He says and pushes it towards Stiles.

“Is this a territory thing, Isaac?” Stiles says, crinkling his nose and holding the shirt out at arm’s length. It looks and more importantly smells like Isaac has been playing extreme Frisbee in it. “Because it had better be vital to your mental health otherwise I am _not_ amused by your need to cover me in your werefunk.”

“It is.” Isaac says it flat out. “You smell like… _Berkley_.” He takes another more careful sniff and his eyes go a little wolfy. “Did you talk to _other werewolves_ there?”

“The Ulfric clan had a problem with this… pseudo-vampire shapeshifter thing that was pretending to be a pig on an organic pork farm. I consulted on the case.” Stiles makes a face a Isaac pouts. “Don’t _judge_ me! I have loans.”

“Does _Derek_ know?”

“What, do you think I’m stupid? How do you think I got the job?” Stiles does not mention the fact that he had an honest to god bodyguard during the entire case and for three weeks after they finally found the _aswang_ and killed it. Also Derek’s doing.

Whatever opinions Isaac has on the subject go unspoken because Scott wanders into the kitchen then, still wearing his vet tech scrubs. He brightens when he spots Stiles and there may be some very manly hugging and backpounding before he too crinkles his nose and takes a good long sniff. “I smell… pretentious coffee shops, ramen, and _desperation_. Midterm hell?” Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise that Isaac ended up with a slightly better nose on him than Scott did because Scott does not detect the two month old trace of ‘foreign werewolf’ on Stiles.

“Got it in one.” Stiles sighs. “I’ve got an inbox full of response papers to grade for my professor and endless grade grubbing to look forward to. If I got a nickel for every time I hear ‘Why isn’t this an A?’ then the pack wouldn’t be subsidizing my degree. Remind me why I decided to go into academia?”

“Damned if I know, man. It was either the kanima or the cannibal ghosts from senior year.” Scott looks at the shirt in Stiles’ hand. “Oh hey, good idea! Let me go grab my hoodie.”

“Is this going to be a thing?” Stiles asks. “Because this wasn’t a thing when we were at UCLA. _Why_ is this a thing now?” … but it doesn’t get him out of wearing Scott and Isaac’s sweaty castoffs or having to sit under Boyd’s arm for fifteen minutes.

Erica just straight up sprays him with her perfume and Stiles feels like it should be sad how grateful he is that she just went and did it without making him sit through any elaborate werewolf cuddling rituals when all he wants to do is crawl into a hot shower and then pass out in his own bed for a while.

Eventually he gets to do that, but it isn’t lost on him that the sheets here aren’t his. He cannot afford whatever zillion thread-count organic Mesopotamian goat cotton this is. It’s probably off Scott and Allison’s bed because Allison knows what the word ‘subtlety’ means and has even been known to practice it on occasion making her officially his favoritest person ever. Sorry, Erica.

He wakes up however many hours later when the dinner bell (read: fire alarm) goes off and he staggers downstairs to help Allison set the table and throw together a salad. He’s still a little groggy when Derek comes up behind him and puts a hand on his shoulder before leaning into him and just… inhaling.

Derek (as always) is still a little grimy from his work at the repair shop and the scent of motor oil, sweat, and turtle wax hits Stiles on this primal level that just demolishes the little knot of tension that’s been riding between his shoulders all semester making him irritable and (to be honest) kind of bitchy.

Stiles thinks he can be forgiven for blinking owlishly at him over the top rim of his glasses (because fuck it, he’s _home_ and he is not dealing with his stupid contacts until he actually has to go somewhere and be presentable) and saying, “Did you need something?”

“Nah.” Is all Derek says before he wanders off to investigate the pot of chili on the stove and… okay. That was kind of weird, but whatever.

Later, Stiles wanders into the second story bonus room, which is basically just a big open space littered with cushions and bean bags all over it where the Pack hangs out. Most people would call it a den, except that’s a little too close to true for Stiles’ comfort when he’s sharing living quarters with a bunch of lycanthropes and ‘den’ implies that there’s a TV in there or something.

Seeing Derek curled up on a mattress-sized cushion fully wolfed out (and then some) makes Stiles realize that ‘den’ is actually the exact right word for what this space is.

Derek cracks an eye as Stiles hesitates in the doorway, unsure of his welcome, and –ah, yes. There it is: living proof that wolves can roll their eyes. Despite the fact that he’s not, uh, in a position to talk Derek can cram volumes into a single annoyed huff. This one roughly translates to ‘get your ass in here and quit hovering’. Mind you, Stiles could be projecting.

“Sorry.” Stiles says. “Just realized I’ve never gotten to see one of you guys change without something around that’s actively trying to kill us.”

_Eye roll._

“Yeah, yeah. Okay, I get it. Shutting up.” Stiles finds a plug and settles himself into the nearest beanbag as he opens his laptop. He firmly tables thoughts about Derek’s shifted mass as compared to his human form and whether if he weighed them would they weigh the same? If not then what happens to the extra mass when it isn’t in use?

He smacks himself and opens his inbox –and yes, it is full of emails from panicking students. What a surprise. At least there isn’t anything in there from his advisor about Stiles’ latest thesis proposal. Stiles isn’t sure his heart can take another re-write.

After a few minutes he becomes aware that something isn’t quite right and when he looks to his left he find an enormous red-eyed hell beast… sorry, _Derek_ reading over his shoulder. It is a mystery how someone that size can move so quietly, but it probably has a lot to do with that whole ‘apex predator’ thing.

“I promise you, it is really not that interesting.” Stiles deadpans and Derek snorts. It sounds like a laugh. “Did you need something?”

Derek pushes at him with one hand. Paw. His transformation post-promotion is rather more complete than his uncle’s so Derek no longer has elaborate claw hands with opposable thumbs. His paws are somewhat more mobile than a real wolf’s but only just. Still, Derek is the king of subvocal communication.

“You want me up? Fine.”

‘Up’ isn’t quite enough and Derek actively herds him over to the palatial ~~doggie bed~~ cushion he was using before. He magnanimously allows Stiles to plug his laptop back in before pushing him down so he lands on his backside. Stiles opens his mouth to yell, but breaks off when Derek curls up behind (and kind of _around_ ) him like the most insistent couch cushion ever.

It actually takes him a minute before realization catches up to him, wheezing and panting, and he leans back against Derek’s side. He can feel the massive bars of Derek’s ribs against his back and when Derek inhales the action is strong enough to lift him up a little. Stiles pats him on the flank anyway.

“I missed you too, asshole.” He says and doesn’t try to hide his smile.

Email is easier after that because Derek is pretty much equal parts fur blanket and blast furnace nor does he care if Stiles mutters at his email as he reads it. Once or twice, he could almost swear he felt the werewolf equivalent of a chuckle ripple through Derek’s side as he verbally composed the best response to a student who apparently thinks that the night after the midterm project was due is absolutely the best time to ask for an extension on it.

The next day Allison explains the whole scenting thing to him because people communicate with _her_.

“You roomed with Scott all through undergrad.” She says as they take their turn in the kitchen. Stiles is making the mother of all vension meatloafs because an entire handful of restive young male werewolves with very few mates among them means that hunting is a trufax necessary thing. The Hale pack will never lack for meat so long as there’s still a mule deer population in Beacon Hills. “And, near as I can tell, only had one wardrobe between you.”

“That is because your boyfriend doesn’t believe in laundry.” Stiles replies and it’s catty, yes, but oh god is it true.

Allison shrugs philosophically. “What you don’t know is that he and the others were engaged in what I can only describe as a dirty t-shirt exchange.” She shakes her head. “They kept a couple of shirts cycling amongst themselves, never washing them until the color started to go off and they’d keep each other scented like that. Scott’s job was to keep us both smelling like pack so he was at the end of the circuit when then clothes were at their smelliest so he had plenty of the ‘werefunk’ to go around.”

“I’m going to regret saying that, aren’t I?”

“No, it’s good. Descriptive. I like it.” Allison’s hands move on autopilot as she dices her way through a pile of carrots fresh from the garden out back. “Anyway, I only found out because Erica accidently-on-purpose sent one to me instead of Scott. I swear my eyes literally watered when I opened the box. I thought she was pranking me, but I recognized the shirt as one of Derek’s. When I saw that I called her and she _had_ to explain it all.”

“Erica and Derek?” Stiles cocks an eyebrow because he really can’t see it and Allison gives him a funny look.

“No, nothing like that.” She says. “Anyway, that’s why they’re suddenly going nuts. Their puny werewolf hindbrains are convinced you’ll forget that you’re pack or, I don’t know, that someone will try and take you away if you aren’t properly marked.”

Stiles thinks back to some of the less subtle overtures that the Berkley pack had started making towards him over the past few weeks. They were skeptical about his nascent career as a cryptozoologist, but after his research saved the alpha’s pregnant wife from a vampire pig they were more open enough to the idea to offer him a place in their pack –and the bite, if he wanted it. They kept their distance at first, but they’ve been getting braver lately and Stiles _had_ chalked it up to a potential decline in Derek’s influence. Maybe he was mistaken.

“Huh.” He says. “Maybe I’ll steal some of Scott’s shirts before I head back as a booster shot.” If it keeps the recruitment attempts and separation anxiety down to a dull roar then Stiles thinks it’d be worth it to spend a couple of nights each week sleeping in someone else’s clothes.

“I’m pretty sure they’re taking a collection already.” Allison chuckles because she’s that chill. “So, what’s an ‘aswang’ anyway and why was it pretending to be a pig?”

“You’re going to regret asking that.” Stiles warns her, but to be honest this is his field and there is nothing he likes better than talking about this sort of thing. “It’s a shapeshifting vampire from the Philippines than feeds on the internal organs of its victims and it’s got a thing for pregnant ladies, which probably works out better when they target women who aren’t married to the biggest damn alpha werewolf I have ever clapped eyes on…”

**4\. Sometimes cubs just HAPPEN.**

Ironically, Stiles is the one who trips over Abigail during a full moon.

One minute he’s having a nice walk enjoying the evening breeze, while he listens to the sounds of a deer hunt in the distance and the next moment he spots movement in the underbrush. Later he won’t be able to explain why he reacts the way he does, but maybe it has something to with the fact that Abby’s wolf looks remarkably like Scott’s did at that age.

Still, he has to admit that very few people react to a charging werewolf by automatically snapping out “ _SIT_.”

Then again it’s probably a good thing that the Hunter community hasn’t caught onto this trick because ‘sit’ is exactly what she does, looking completely confused as she does it like her haunches have betrayed her.

God, were any of them ever this young? Stiles can hardly remember, but somehow he thinks not because the girl’s wolf is all enormous paws and huge eyes that make a bizarre contrast to her rangy body and ivory fangs.

“Follow me.” He says because she doesn’t look like she’s got enough of a handle on her alternate nature to process complex orders while the moon is still up. He turns and walks back towards the house. He knows better than to look back to see if she’s following. That’s weakness and for whatever reason the pup has accepted him as dominant over her for the moment, but that’s not going to last if he starts acting insecure.

The girl pup whines a little when Stiles opens up one of the containment cells for her. She looks wistfully towards one of the grates as a howl echoes in the darkness.

“No. You may not hunt. Go inside.” He closes the cell door after her and locks it, which she reacts to well enough. She might even be used to it. Stiles files that bit of information away to examine later. “I’ll come let you out in the morning.”

Stiles makes good on his promise once the sun is up and everyone is awake and moving. A young girl (blonde and maybe twelve with brown eyes, freckles, and a cute little snub nose) is waiting in the cell. Fortunately for Stiles’ peace of mind she found the sweats that Allison stores underneath the cots in each cell so she isn’t naked, but she’s wary.

“Good morning.” Stiles unlocks the door without ceremony. “Do you need to call someone?”

“My mom.” The girl says and follows Stiles up into the kitchen where Allison is engaged in a fit of pancake making that cannot be matched. Technically it’s Boyd’s turn to cook, but he will trade any number of demeaning chores to Allison and Stiles in order to get out of cooking.

Stiles hooks her up with the kitchen phone line and Allison hooks her up with a plate of pancakes and bacon.

“Eat up and let me know when you want seconds. Stiles, tag me out. I want to eat.” Allison takes up a spot next to the girl and once she’s made her call, proceeds to sweetly interrogate her.

Abby is, as it turns out, a recent transplant to Beacon Hills along with her adoptive mother who has evidently been having to struggle with the twin burdens of being both a single parent _and_ the parent of a werewolf.

“No one bit me.” Abby says when Stiles asks and judging by the expressions on his Pack’s faces she’s telling the truth. “I’ve always been like this. It was easier when I was little, I think. Mom could make me obey and I wasn’t so strong, but lately…” She shrugs, kind of helpless. “It’s been getting harder. I get… angry sometimes and I don’t even know what I’m angry about, so I get _angrier_ and…”

“Puberty.” Derek says because tact is something that happens to other people. He’s correct though, but the expression on Abby’s face says she’s been hearing that word a lot lately and is getting tired of having people blaming everything on her hormones.

“Everyone has to deal with that part.” Stiles says and Abby’s attention shifts to him immediately. “Even humans. You’re just getting a double whammy and that sucks, but that’s the way it is. You can learn to master it, but it takes training. Having a pack helps.” He flips another pancake onto her plate. “Keep eating. You could use the carbs right about now.”

When Abby’s mother arrives, she takes the situation about as well as one could expect which is to say she arrives with a gun loaded with silver shot she has evidently manufactured herself (resourceful woman) and points it at Stiles when he goes to greet her in the driveway.

“Wow.” Stiles holds his hands up. “For starters: the silver bullet thing is a myth and secondly: I am not one of the wolves.”

“Where is my daughter?” Later on Ruth Jones will reveal herself to be a wonderful caring woman with a heart of gold and spirit of solid steel, but at the moment she’s a mother who’s been up all night trying to find her child, who evidently escaped out the boarded up window of her basement when she heard the Hale Pack hunting calls.

She’s not really beautiful in any sense of the word, but her rawboned features are compelling nevertheless and right now her face is the definition of grim determination as she looks at Stiles down the double-barrel of a shot gun.

“She’s fine. I loaned her a containment cell for the night and now she’s eating her bodyweight in blueberry pancakes.” Stiles points at his pocket. “I can call inside and have her come out under her own power so you can see for yourself. You don’t even have to drop the gun.”

However, that’s kind of moot point because Abby bursts out the front door just then and gasps at the sight of her mother with a gun.

“ _Mom_! Don’t shoot him!”

“Abby, baby, get in the car.” Ruth grits out. “We are leaving.”

“They didn’t hurt me and they didn’t let me hurt anybody else.” Abby runs across the gravel drive wearing a pair of Erica’s flip flops and resolutely plants herself inbetween Stiles and her rampaging mother. “They lent me clothes and let me eat breakfast with them and they _know_ stuff, mom. They’re a _pack_.” Her eyes shine when she says the word ‘pack’ in a voice that is all but breathless with longing.

Stiles wonders how long she’s been yearning for a pack of her own; maybe her entire life.

“Put down the gun.” Derek is standing on the front step. He’s wearing a faded AD/DC t-shirt with the sleeves and collar ripped out over a pair of flannel pajama pants with no shoes on and still manages to project such an aura of palpable authority that Ruth lowers the barrel of her rifle without actually thinking about it.

Derek tilts his gaze so it rests on Stiles. “Take them both inside. This is a pack discussion. Everyone should be present for it.” He turns and goes without looking to see if he’s being followed, which kind of reminds Stiles of leading Abby into the containment cells last night.

“We should go.” Ruth sounds less convinced, but she doesn’t look like she’s going to shoot anyone now.

“Do you really want to have to keep doing this on your own because let me tell you, I wish I’d had the benefit of a pack when my best friend got bitten.” Stiles says and nods towards the door. “There’s stuff she needs to know if she’s going to stay under the radar and life is easier for wolves when they’ve got an alpha.”

“Is that what _he_ is?” Ruth frowns at the house and presumably at Derek by extension.

“Do you really need to ask?”

Ruth barks a laugh and shoulders her shotgun, pointing it towards the ground as she unloads it with practiced ease. “I suppose not.” She admits and squints at Stiles. “What are you?”

“Human.” Stiles says with a shrug.

“I have a hard time believing that.” Ruth says as she watches her daughter fall into step behind him like a baby duck and Stiles has a hard time blaming her.

Sometimes he does too.

**5\. Paranoia isn’t a problem. It’s an _art form._**

Stiles brings the mother of all flu bugs home with him that winter break because college students are dirty, dirty creatures who share their diseases with wild abandon and no amount of hand-sanitizer can keep all the bugs at bay. The only thing that Airborne does is get you through until the end of the semester.

Still, he’s kind of proud of the fact that he didn’t succumb to the plague until after he got his grades turned in.

“That’s a fever.” Erica announces as she pops the thermometer out of Stiles’ mouth. She checks the readout and just nods. “Advil, fluids, bed rest, and minimal contact with other humans. You know the drill.”

“Ugh.” Stiles’ throat feels like sandpaper and he gropes for the Dasani bottle that sits by his bed. Erica intercepts him and hands it over. “Thanks.”

“I’ll bring you up another bottle from the kitchen. Isaac is going to be home all day waiting on a call from his editor so just moan loudly if you want him to come bring you something.” She pats him on the shoulder. “Poor baby.”

“Bet you don’t miss this part of being human.” Stiles croaks.

“I really don’t.” She says without hesitation. “Then again you don’t actually have to put up with it either. One little nip from Derek…” She trails off and waggles her eyebrows.

“I like my life the way it is.” He wiggles down into the sheets and waits for the cold meds to kick in and ease the ache in his joints. “Turning furry doesn’t really hold the same appeal for me.”

“Your loss.” Erica shrugs one shoulder and leans over to plant a kiss on his forehead. “My shift is going to start soon so have Isaac text me if you develop any new symptoms.” She snags her jacket off of Stiles’ desk chair and shrugs into it.

In retrospect a werewolf paramedic isn’t that odd of an idea even when you don’t count the ability to take away pain. Erica’s got nerves of steel and a stomach to match. Moreover she’s tough enough to survive almost anything that the job can throw at her.

“Thanks, Erica. Good luck.”

She grins. “I don’t need luck, but I’ll take it anyway.”

Stiles spends the day alternately napping and doing a little light reading. Isaac checks on him constantly and keeps finding excuses to steal bits and snatches of his pain at every opportunity. At any other time, Stiles would have been up all night after sleeping through the day but he falls asleep around eight pm and doesn’t wake up until the next morning when Allison crawls into bed with him.

“Aw _no_ , not you too.” He groans as she wiggles under the blankets and sniffles into his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” She sighs. “I catch everything.” Her entire body is on fire and there’s no question of whether or not Allison is running a fever.

“Does Scott know you’re here?” It’s not that he’s afraid of his best friend mistaking this for something untoward, but it’s safer to ask.

“Yeah, he’s bringing us some oatmeal and Derek is staying home from the garage to keep an eye on us.” She cuddles closer and shivers. “You’re _warm_.”

“ _You’re_ burning up.”

“I took some Advil and stood under the shower. It’ll break soon –I hope.”

They stay like that until sometime midafternoon when Derek appears to pick Allison up out of bed and carries her off somewhere. Stiles is too sick to care at that point, but he manages some weak outrage when the alpha reappears a few minutes later, picks him up too, and carries him into the master bedroom where Allison is huddled up in Derek’s massive bed next to Lydia, who looks like death warmed over.

Things make a little more sense now.

“No one is going to attack us because we’re weak right now, Derek.” Stiles grumbles as Derek lowers him onto the mattress with surprisingly gentle hands. “It’s just the flu.”

“Tell that to my betas.” Derek rumbles and pulls the thick quilts up to Stiles’ chin. “Scott and Jackson have set up a defensible perimeter downstairs. Erica is checking the groceries for poison and Boyd has been listening to the police scanner checking for evidence of hunter movements.”

“You are all paranoid.”

“We’re _werewolves_.” Derek corrects him. “It’s a dangerous world for us and the ones we love.”

Stiles lets his eyes flicker shut as a tired sigh escapes him because… yeah. That’s not an inaccurate statement coming from _Derek Hale_ of all people. “I’m sorry.” He says it softly and even he can’t quite say what he’s sorry for.

“Just get better soon.” Derek tells him. “That’s all we need.”

**6\. There is no such thing as an announced visit.**

The door is unlocked when Stiles gets back to his apartment. He checks the lock for scratches and finding no evidence that someone picked or otherwise forced it, he steps inside braced for any number of things to jump out of the darkness.

… except the lights are on and his front hallway smells like a meat lover’s special.

“This isn’t the apartment you showed us in the ad.” Derek comments from somewhere in the inside.

“That would be because I photoshopped a different picture onto the ad for this one.” Stiles dumps his bag and papers in the front hall and when he ducks his head into the kitchen Derek is waiting with Scott on one side and a pile of Papa John’s boxes in between them. “You had better have saved me some.”

“What kind of friend do you take me for?” Scott asks and pulls a Chicken Bar-B-Q out from the bottom of the stack. “Don’t answer that.” He adds.

“All is forgiven!” Stiles pulls out two pieces and sandwiches them together so he can load up on calories at optimal speed. “I haven’t eaten since this morning. I had to cover my professor for office hours today and this one brat who’s been blowing off class since the first week would not get lost!”

**7\. Your Dating Life is Everyone's Business**

One thing Stiles misses about undergrad is the way Scott used to passive-aggressively run off all his dates. He never seemed to have a problem with the Stiles having a sex life even once that sex life largely seemed to involve guys, but he got twitchy when anyone seemed like they were going to stick.

“He wasn’t any good for you” is the best explanation Scott would ever give for his behavior and as a result, people started assuming that Scott, Stiles, and Allison were all together.

It’s stupid to miss that now, but Stiles can’t help but wish that Scott was around right now to do that thing where he’d casually muscle his way between Stiles and a date gone wrong with Allison taking up a spot on his other side with a smile that looks sweet to people who don’t know how many knives she carries on her person.

Then again, maybe Stiles would be better at break ups now if things had happened differently.

It’s raining when Stiles pulls his Jeep into the drive. It’s been raining for the past forty minutes; a cold, wet, and thematically appropriate downpour that would have been less of a problem if Stiles hadn’t grabbed the wrong key ring when he stormed out of his apartment.

Erica is the one who answers the door and her eyes go wide as her nostrils twitch at the sight of him. Apparently the rain isn’t enough to wash away the evidence on his skin. “Oh, Stiles, _sweetheart_.” She says and hauls him inside, which is nice and kind of terrifying because she’s never called him by a pet name before.

Despite the fact that she’s sort of challenged in the nurturing department, Erica all but strips Stiles herself and pushes him into a hot bath before taking all his clothes away to be washed. At first he thinks it’s for his comfort, but she puts him under the shower two more times before he passes muster and can graduate to sitting in the kitchen in a pair of sweats of unknown provenance with a sweat with a steak over his blackened eye.

“Okay.” She says at last. “I can’t smell him now. I’ve Febreezed the front hall way and washed everything you brought with you. There is now an infinitesimal chance that Derek won’t find whoever did this to you and kill him.”

“Thank you.” Stiles says and it’s not for Jim because Jim can choke on a dick for all he cares, but the last thing that the pack needs is another murder investigation hanging over Derek’s head and Stiles doesn’t want to be the cause of that. He’s already going to have to deal with his dad’s reaction and doing damage control on two fronts is more than Stiles wants to deal with right now.

“Don’t thank me.” Erica says darkly. “I am choosing to trust that this is the first and only time he’s tried this, because if you ever utter the words ‘he didn’t mean it’ I will slit the bastard up myself and move you back home.”

“No, he meant it.” Stiles tests the tender skin along the top edge of his cheek bone and hisses. “Damn, I’m going to have to wear sunglasses to class” …and the jock who sits in the back is going to joke about how Stiles’ boyfriend must beats him until one of the lit majors kicks him under the table. “My guard was down. It won’t happen twice.” He’s gone toe-to-toe with the undead and the slightly-less-dead. Having a poli-sci major get the drop on him is just embarrassing.

“Hmmm.” Despite the noncommittal noise, Erica kisses him on the cheek and shoos him upstairs when she hears tires in the front drive.

Stiles goes back to his room and stretches out on the bed. It’s got the fancy sheets on again, which means someone may have been sleeping in his bed but he can’t make himself care. When the door opens, he’s expecting Scott or Erica. Eric is more likely, but it’s sixish and that’s about when Scott gets off work.

He isn’t expecting to open his eyes (eye) to the sight of Derek crouching by his bed.

“You should see the other guy.” He jokes and it’s the exact wrong thing to say.

“Let me see.” Derek doesn’t actually wait for Stiles to move the steak and lifts it up himself. His eyes flicker close to red (not quite, but it’s close) and that’s alarming because Derek’s control over the Wolf is ironclad these days. “ _Who_?” He growls and it’s not a ‘who’ that’s masquerading as an offer of a shoulder for Stiles to cry it out on. That ‘who’ wants a name and an address.

“Doesn’t matter.” Stiles says and frowns back at Derek. “It _doesn’t_ matter because it’s not happening again. It was a blow-out fight.”

“That’s not an excuse…”

“I’m not saying it is.” Stiles rolls his eyes (eye). “Give me some credit… and no. I’m not telling you who.”

“I could find out.” Derek says stubbornly.

“I’m sure you could, but you won’t because you respect my decisions and don’t want to cause trouble for me.” Stiles gives him a hard look. “ _Right_?” It’s not really a question.

Derek glares right back and it’s an old school battle of wills between them for a little while. Normally Stiles can hold his own, but usually he’s not down to one eye. Derek is the first to break, but Stiles has a feeling that Derek could have held out if he wanted to yet chose not to for some reason.

“What are you doing, dating someone like that?” Derek sighs after a bit and presses the steak back down over Stiles’ eye. “I didn’t expect this from you.”

“Hey, it’s not like he handed me a card when we first hooked up that said ‘Hi, my name is So-and-so and I’m a violent drunk in recovery’.” Although that totally needs to be a thing, like sex offenders. Stiles can think of quite a few people who could use a nice shameful sign in their front yard. “Don’t look at me like that, Derek. If he ever comes near me again, I’m calling the cops. I don’t do second chances.”

Derek takes a breath. It looks suspiciously like one of the ‘deep calming’ variety. “No.” He says after a while. “I suppose you don’t.” Then after a while he abruptly asks, “ _He_?”

Stiles swallows and drops his gaze because this? This is not a conversation he’s had with a lot of people… only Scott, really, and Scott can be counted on to not care. This is something he hasn’t even really brought up with his dad. He’s assumed that the pack can smell whoever he’s been with and just choose not to discuss it.

It only occurs to him now that they might have been waiting for _him_ to bring it up.

“Yeah.” Stiles says, proud of how steady his voice is because he’s feeling like a tool right now. “He.”

“Hmm.” It’s not a judgmental sound that Derek makes, merely thoughtful.

“I still like girls.” Stiles keeps talking because he’s got this feeling that Derek will get it. Most people seem to think that ‘bi’ either means you’re an enormous slut or you’re _really_ just marking time with guys or girls until someone with the ideal plumbing comes along. “I just… also like guys. Equally, but not at the same time. You know?”

“You’re bisexual.”

“Yeah, pretty much.” Stiles sags. “I… uh… you know I wasn’t trying to hide it from you guys, right?”

Derek smirks. “You come home wearing other people’s cologne too often for me to believe that.” He looks away and leans forward with his elbows on his knees. “We know.” There’s a frown tugging at what little of Derek’s mouth that Stiles can see as he struggles to piece together whatever it is he wants to say next.

“You may bring people home, Stiles.” He says at last. “The pack is meant to grow.”

Stiles isn’t really proud of the bitter little laugh that escapes him, but it happens anyway. Derek turns to frown at him and Stiles just shakes his head.

“Haven’t met anybody I’m willing to share you guys with.” Stiles shrugs and smiles to gloss over how horrifically egocentric that sounded. “You know me. I’m a greedy bastard.”


	8. Can You See What I've Seen?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles is twenty-four the year Derek Hale comes back to town.
> 
> Laura is over the moon and he finds her dancing around the kitchen in her terrycloth bed shorts the morning she gets the news.
> 
> “Did you win the lottery?” He asks, scrubbing the crusties from his eyes and groping for the coffee pot. He’s fresh from an all-nighter spent grading student summer photography projects and if he has to look at one more picture of someone’s boyfriend/girlfriend hamming it up for the camera in someone’s backyard…
> 
> “Nnnnope!” Laura signs, swiveling her hips. “I just got a call from Orlando! He called to bitch about Derek cancelling his lease with no notice.”
> 
> Stiles blinks as his mental gears find a little traction and start to grind away. “Your brother?”
> 
> “Mmmhmmm!”
> 
> Well, that explains Laura’s good mood. Stiles knows precisely jack about his Alpha’s mysterious sibling beyond the fact that he’s still considered pack even though he lives in New York and Laura routinely gets calls from the Brooklyn Alpha complaining about ‘Derek made the ambassador from Wichita cry’ this or ‘Call your pet psycho home already’ that; wah wah wah.

Stiles is twenty-four the year Derek Hale comes back to town.

Laura is over the moon and he finds her dancing around the kitchen in her terrycloth bed shorts the morning she gets the news.

“Did you win the lottery?” He asks, scrubbing the crusties from his eyes and groping for the coffee pot. He’s fresh from an all-nighter spent grading student summer photography projects and if he has to look at _one more_ picture of someone’s boyfriend/girlfriend hamming it up for the camera in someone’s backyard…

“Nnnnope!” Laura signs, swiveling her hips. “I just got a call from Orlando! He called to bitch about Derek cancelling his lease with no notice.”

Stiles blinks as his mental gears find a little traction and start to grind away. “Your brother?”

“Mmmhmmm!”

Well, that explains Laura’s good mood. Stiles knows precisely jack about his Alpha’s mysterious sibling beyond the fact that he’s still considered pack even though he lives in New York and Laura routinely gets calls from the Brooklyn Alpha complaining about ‘Derek made the ambassador from Wichita cry’ this or ‘Call your pet psycho home already’ that; _wah wah wah_.

For a werewolf, Orlando is kind of a pansy but he manages his pack well enough in one of the most aggressive cities in the world with a minimum of maulings so he has to be doing _something_ right.

“He’s headed here?” Stiles persists in his questions because he’s been Laura’s beta since he was sixteen. He knows better than to believe that she’s going to voluntarily offer up information.

“Presumably!” She shrugs. “It’s not like he talks much. I told him I wanted him to come home. He grunted. Now Orlando is whining about the security deposit. I choose to interpret this in a favorable light.”

“Huh.” Stiles considers this for a moment. “So, do I need to swap rooms?” He asks because he’s got the second largest bedroom in the house, second only to the Alpha suite. Stiles is not terribly dominant. He’s not a submissive either, but his rank as Laura’s second is due only to the fact that there’s literally no other competition.

Sometimes they get an Omega swinging through town who entertains the notion of sticking around, but it never lasts. Laura’s brand of leadership is a lot like Muzak. Either ten minutes of it makes you want to run for the hills and never look back or you barely notice it’s there at all. Stiles is part of the latter category, although she’s gotten a lot better over the years.

What little he knows of Derek implies the ornery bastard is dominant as hell and his position as a Hale-by-blood automatically edges Stiles, who was merely bitten by one, down the totem pole. He likes his room. It’s got great light and space for all his bookshelves, but he’s not about to throw down for it.

“No clue!” Laura snags her favorite Strawberry Shortcake mug from the cabinet and snaps her fingers imperiously so Stiles will get her tea down from the top shelf. Being Alpha means never having to find a step ladder.

“Lavender Earl Gray or White Pear Jasmine?” Stiles asks, already reaching up for the tin.

“I feel like celebrating. White Pear.” She grins with sharp teeth as Stiles hands her a tea bag. “This is the start of something _good_.” She presses a kiss against Stiles’ cheek, clearly over the moon at the prospect of having all her pack in one place.

In hindsight, Stiles wishes he could go back to that morning and jump on the phone to tell Derek to drive faster, get on a plane, anything to get him to Beacon Hills just two days sooner.

…but hindsight is 20/20, as they say, and by the time Derek’s shiny black Camaro crosses state lines Laura will have been missing for thirty-six hours.

 

* * *

 

Stiles is sitting on the front step with his cellphone dangling from numb fingertips and feeling like his chest has been hollowed out with a spoon when a car pulls up the gravel drive. He’s just gotten off the phone with his dad’s dispatch officer getting confirmation of something he didn’t need a phone call to know.

When the dark haired stranger gets out of his car Stiles can tell by the bleak expression on his face that he knows it too, would have felt the bond between Alpha and Beta snapping even more strongly than Stiles did just by virtue of his blood connection to Laura.

Stiles doesn’t manage to get out more than a breathless “ _You_ …” before Derek has him slammed up against the wooden siding by the front of his shirt.

They’re of similar heights, but Derek outweighs him by at least twenty pounds of pure muscle. His eyes are clear phosphorescent blue as he pulls Stiles away from the wall and then slams him back into it.

“ _What did you do_?” He snarls.

“I didn’t!” Stiles lets his own eyes go pale yellow, which is the only evidence he can offer in his own defense that Derek’s going to believe. As a Beta, Stiles has only one motivation to want Laura dead and if he isn’t strong enough to take it from her then he has every reason to want her to stay alive until he can.

Stiles doesn’t want to be an Alpha. He barely wanted to be a werewolf, but Derek has no way of knowing that.

Derek drops him, but doesn’t step back. “ _You_ are going to tell me _everything_.” He growls, poking Stiles in the chest with his index finger and it’s so reminiscent of Laura when she’s in her ‘I mean business’ mode that a wave of grief completely blindsides him.

Maybe it’s the faint almost-familiar scent of _homepacklauraleatherhale_ clinging to Derek’s skin, that persistent marker of belonging which no amount of scrubbing can ever truly erase, but Stiles lists forward and tucks his nose into the crux of Derek’s shoulder where his scent creeps up from the collar of his shirt and breathes him in deep.

“Someone killed our Alpha.” The rumble mingle rage and sorrow in his voice surprises even Stiles and he’s not surprised to feel his fingers flexing into claws. He wants to rip into something, tear it to shreds, or maybe to tuck himself inside Derek’s familiar/unfamiliar scent and pretend like it never ever happened.

“I…” Derek’s hands settle on Stiles’ shoulders like awkward birds ready to take flight at any second. This close he has to be able to smell the complete absence of Laura’s blood on Stiles, to know he’s telling the truth when he says he didn’t kill her and wasn’t involved with whoever did. “I know.” He says at last and there’s a catch in his voice that in anyone else would be a prelude to a sob, but in him sounds like grim determination. He lets his forehead drop onto the top of Stiles’ head and it takes a moment, but Stiles realizes that he too is breathing in as much of Stiles’ scent as he can.

They stand there for a long while, just mourning.

 

* * *

 

“…the police don’t know much,” Stiles says as he sets down a mug of coffee in front of Derek and watches him spoon enough cream and sugar into it to make a fairly decent ice-cream base.

Stiles would _not_ have pegged him as having a sweet tooth. Well, good for him. Everyone needs a few glaring inconsistencies in their lives.

“Or if they do, they’re trying to spare my delicate feelings.” Stiles rolls his eyes for good measure. Beacon Hills rates highly when it comes to accepting communities, but a lot of his dad’s deputies have decided that being gay means that Stiles is actually a girl in a man’s body –and not even a _real_ girl either: one of those handkerchief-fluttering Bronte heroines or whoever the fuck it is who faints at the drop of a hat and requires constant application of smelling salts.

(His dad thinks it’s hilarious, by the way, but isn’t any more forthcoming with pertinent information than his minions.)

He kind of misses being treated like the sheriff’s little wise-cracking twerp of a son, but he’s only been out for like six months tops after spending his grad school years quietly experimenting. If there’s any justice in the world then this is just how they’re coping and things will get back to normal before long.

“From what I’ve heard on the police scanner –shut up, don’t judge me- they haven’t found all…” He pauses to wet his lips and get a handle on his voice. “… all of her body. Just the bottom half.”

Derek is staring down at his coffee, not drinking it, so it’s hard to get a bead on his expression. “That’s how _hunters_ kill.”

“I know.” Stiles rubs his arms to banish the gooseflesh. Hunters have been his personal boogey man for going on fifteen years now. He couldn’t sleep right for a month after the Argents moved back into town for good. Laura ended up making him sleep in her room for a while and drugged him with a tincture of diluted belladonna and mountain ash just so he could get some shut-eye. “I thought that was the case until you got into town, but you don’t have the…” Stiles doesn’t even know what to call it, really. “The mojo.” He finishes lamely. “And I like to think it would have passed to me over Peter if you weren’t in range.”

“Have you been to check on him?” Derek asks suddenly.

Stiles shakes his head. “I’m not the right kind of family.” He explains. “I’ve only ever been with Laura. Besides, if he had the mojo I think he’d be up and around by now. Alphas can heal anything that doesn’t kill them first.” They have to in order to keep a pack of unruly Betas in line and defend them at the same time.

Derek nods as though he’s come to a decision and knocks back his coffee in three gulps. “I’m going to search the property.” He rumbles and goes for his jacket where it’s sitting out on the counter.

“I’ll get my coat and shoes.” Stiles says, but gets brought up short when Derek catches him by the shoulder.

“You’re staying here.”

Stiles narrows his eyes. “I’m every bit as much of a wolf as you are, Hale.” He growls. “I don’t need defending. I was your sister’s second.”

“And I wasn’t.” Derek replies implacable. “She was training you to take over as the lore keeper for the pack and now _you’re all that’s_ _left_. She’d claw her way out of the grave to tear my throat out if I let you get killed too.” He pushes Stiles back down into his seat. “You stay here. You stay by the phone. If I need you, I’ll call.”

“Shit.” Stiles drops his gaze, knowing that he’s lost, and hating every second of it. “If you get your furry ass killed, I am not avenging you. Got it?”

“Got it.” Derek agrees and he’s gone before Stiles can take it back.

“Shit.” He groans and puts his head in his hands. “Shit, shit, _shit_.”

 

* * *

 

The thing is, Stiles has never been good at the ‘stay at home and wait patiently while the grown-ups do what’s best’ thing. He’s no better at it now that it’s the big strong wolfman doing what’s best instead of his dad so he sets up call forwarding on the house line to his cell phone and takes off for the police station.

Honestly, in terms of staying safe it’s probably a better option than sticking around the isolated house in the middle of the creepy woods however he never makes it that far.

Instead he spots a familiar figure trudging along the side of the road and has to pull over. Scott McCall looks up with wide surprised brown eyes when Stiles puts down his window and leans out.

“Stiles, hi.” He stuffs his hands into the spacious pockets of his hoodie and rocks back and forth on his heels in the traditional shifty teenager dance of poorly concealed guilt.

Scott McCall is one of the local high school kids that Stiles used to tutor on the side to keep from having to rely too heavily on the stipend he received from Laura while he was in school. Not to brag or anything, but Stiles is the main reason the lacrosse team is able to keep its roster of star players intact. Scott is not a member of that illustrious company, but he is one of the few students whose studies Stiles still oversees. It’s a bit of extra cash and he likes the kid, wants to see him do well, and Scott needs all the help he can get in that capacity.

“Hi there, Scott. What are you doing out here?” Stiles keeps his expression open and friendly despite the fact he’s talking to a 140 pound asthmatic who decided it would be a good idea to hike out into the reserve when Stiles knows for a fact his cell phone was confiscated last week because his grades dipped.

“I, uh… just taking a walk?” Scott smiles hopefully, but it trickles away in the face of Stiles’ continued skepticism. “Look, please don’t tell my mom I’m out here, okay?”

“It depends on why you’re out here.” Stiles has learned better than to make blind promises working with teenagers …especially when the phrase ‘please don’t tell my mom’ comes into play.

Scott kicks the dirt and sighs. “I dropped my inhaler out here yesterday evening.” He admits at length.

“… and what were you doing _then_?” Stiles persists.

“I was jogging.” Scott looks up. “I’m going to make first line this year. My grades are up enough so I won’t get benched, but I missed some conditioning over the summer. I’ve got to catch up before tryouts so I’ve been jogging out in the Reserve.” ‘ _Where no one will see and report me to my mom or the coach_ ’ goes unsaid, but heavily implied. “I…” Here he pauses and Stiles hears his heart rate spikes with the weight of an impending lie. “I must have dropped it without noticing.” He says and… it’s not a complete fabrication, not so Stiles can tell. “I’ve got to get it back. Those things are like eighty bucks each! My mom’ll kill me.”

“Yeah, she probably will.” Stiles agrees. He’s well familiar with Mrs. McCall and her kitchen. He’s also well aware that RNs may make decent money, but no one’s got spare $100 bills just lying around. “All right, pup. Get in. We’ll look for your inhaler, but you’re going to pace yourself and if I even think I see an asthma attack coming on then I’m calling your mom.”

“Deal.” Scott obediently hops into the passenger side seat.

“Where did you exit the woods?” Stiles asks. “We’ll backtrack from there.”

“Oh, uh, that subdivision south of your house.” Scott flinches and his pulse all but jangles. “I mean, you and Laura’s…” He licks his lips. “Are you okay? I know you and Miss Laura were…” He shrugs, unable to put Stiles’ relationship into words that make sense to him. He’s still at that thorny age where platonic friendships between men and women don’t quite seem possible.

“Not great.” Stiles admits. “…but I’m holding together. Laura’s brother just got into town and that helps a bit.” Let Scott think it’s because Stiles doesn’t have to wrangle the funeral home alone and not because Derek’s just close enough to being an Alpha to keep him from tipping over into becoming an Omega again.

He sniffs the air. Strange, but Scott sort of smells like… “Hey, Scott. Are you hurt anywhere?” He asks because damned if that doesn’t smell like old blood.

Scott winces. “Yeah, I… fell down yesterday.” He pauses, clearly trying to come up with a good story that won’t get him dragged to the hospital. He’s well used to the fact that Stiles has a sixth sense when it comes to teenage shenanigans from his numerous attempts to pass Photo 2. “Something spooked a herd of mule deer and I tripped getting out of the way.”

Again it’s not the whole truth and Stiles doesn’t need super hearing to sense that, but he lets it lay. Scott’s only going to clam up if he thinks Stiles is interrogating him.

“You should stay out of the woods for a while once we find your inhaler.” Stiles tells him. “Whatever killed Laura hasn’t been caught yet.”

_There_. Stiles hears Scott’s heart rate jackknife into high-gear and he tenses, ready to lunge for the over-the-counter emergency inhaler he started keeping in his glove box the first time Scott had an attack during one of their tutoring sessions… only the characteristic grind of lung tissue and muscle of an attack never arrives. Scott just breathes heavily for a few seconds before he comes across the brilliant idea of just holding his breath until it passes. He turns a wide-eyed dumb expression on Stiles that Stiles hasn’t fallen for in years instead.

“It’ll be laired up for the day now, right?” He says like he doesn’t know rabid animals don’t stick to their normal hunting patterns. Maybe he doesn’t.

“Yeah, sure.” Stiles turns his attention to the road.

Something is up with his young friend and unless he’s missed his guess, Stiles is positive it has to do with Laura’s death.

 

* * *

 

Scott directs Stiles to the back of one of the obnoxious subdivisions cropping up all along the edge of town, creeping ever closer to Hale property. Laura had been in the middle of a land buying project to create a bit more of a buffer between pack lands and the town. She’d pitched it to the city as a ‘Green Belt’ which seemed to be going over well, even though there was a developer who wanted the same land for a strip mall.

‘Here’s hoping Derek can pick up where she left off.’ Stiles thinks to himself as he kicks through the underbrush, looking for clues. He’s already found evidence of Scott’s mad dash though the trees. He’s also found the spot where Scott evidently _leapt_ over some poor retiree’s back fence and landed in their (admittedly ugly and fairly useless) swimming pool. Not that Stiles is judging. _Much_.

It’s been five minutes and Stiles is already getting a pretty good idea of whatever it was that Scott met out in the darkness last night.

Apparently the new Alpha isn’t wasting time building a new power base, but he or she is just crazy enough to go around biting the first teenager that stumbles across their path.

Fortunately for Scott he managed to get away or Stiles is pretty sure there would have been another missing person report out today while the Alpha inducted him into his new pack.

They backtrack Scott’s trail deeper into the woods and a familiar scent begins to tickle Stiles’ nose. He can smell Derek off in the distance, but the wind is such that Derek probably can’t smell him, but more importantly he’s picking up the faintest traces of Laura’s perfume mixed with blood.

Her body must be somewhere nearby.

Stiles runs his tongue over lips gone chapped and pulls out his cell to tap out a quick message to Derek. If they’re this close to …to Laura then her killer won’t be far away. It goes against the instinct to be separated from an important kill until it’s been hidden away from scavengers.

OUT I/WOODS BY FUGLY SUBDIV SE O/HOUSE. SCENT IS STRNG HERE. IT BIT SMBDY. COME SOONST.

The reply comes almost immediately.

STAY AWAY FROM IT.

Stiles rolls his eyes and replies _NO_ then puts his phone away and ignores it when it starts to vibrate.

Scott becomes visibly nervous the further they go, the stronger the scent of blood gets, and Stiles realizes that Scott can most likely smell it even if he has no idea what it is he’s reacting to. That kid is going to have one _hell_ of a nose when he’s got some age on him, Stiles thinks.

Derek is nearby now, but keeping his distance. Stiles is pretty sure he can hear the man’s heartbeat and his scent is strong enough that even Stiles, who isn’t the world’s greatest bloodhound, can pick it up easily. Derek’s hanging back; close enough to come to the rescue in an emergency but far enough back that Scott’s nascent senses can’t detect him.

HES GOT A GOOD NOSE ALRDY. KEEP AN EYE ON THE WIND. He texts Derek so he knows to stay downwind of Scott.

FINE. Is the somewhat grumpy response.

The scent of oxidized blood gets strong and thick in Stiles’ nose and Scott is practically radiating distress when they finally reach the place where Laura had to have been killed. Stiles can see the marks of a fight all around, the kind of battle signs a human will never know to look for up high in the trees where claws once gouged into the bark. There aren’t many and it doesn’t look like Laura was able to shift completely before her attacker tore her apart.

Stiles frowns. Who could have gotten the drop on her out here in the heart of her own territory?

…who would she have dropped her guard for?

Well, Derek for one, but he’s got a pretty ironclad alibi so far.

The ground is too dry to hold tracks very well, but Stiles manages to find traces of Laura’s boot tread leading into the clearing up to a pair of men’s dress shoes. The attacker’s scent has been obliterated by the _blooddeathpain_ odor, but Stiles can get enough to tell the man was alone with no detectable accomplices. He’ll have to check the trees later to be sure, but he’s got no evidence that Derek was present for Laura’s death.

So, who else did Laura trust to that degree?

Stiles frowns. He has no idea.

For his part Scott is doing an abysmal job of not staring at the spot where he must have seen Laura’s body while he pokes around in the scrub growth.

So far no sign of the missing inhaler, but Stiles has what he came for and all evidence points to Scott not really needing it anymore. He’s thinking of reasons to invite Scott back to the house for a little heart-to-heart chat when Derek evidently loses his patience and steps out from behind a tree.

“What are you doing here?” He growls at Scott, ignoring Stiles all together. “This is private property.”

“He wandered off the Reserve while jogging last night and dropped something.” Stiles interjects smoothly. “He’s one of my students that I tutor part-time.” He smiles when Derek scowls at him. “Scott, this is Laura’s brother, Derek.”

“Uh… pleased to meet you?” Scott makes a half-hearted wave, which is fair because Derek is looking skeevy as all hell right now.

“I don’t suppose you came across an inhaler while you were out, did you?” Stiles asks Derek, who fixes him with a murderous glare, but reaches into his pocket and all but throws the inhaler at Scott’s face. “Awesome. Hey, Scott, you want to come over? I was going to make lunch. Maybe we could go over your summer homework one last time too.”

“Uh, no… I’m okay.” Scott is eyeing Derek like the man is about to tear his throat out, which… okay, yeah. That is a totally legit concern he should be having. Derek’s all but sprouted hackles for the express purpose of raising them and he’s positioned himself so he can get in-between Scott and Stiles at a moment’s notice.

“Well, it’s your choice.” Stiles shrugs. “I’ll give you a ride back into town.”

“No, that’s okay.” Scott backs up a little, eyes still trained on Derek. “I’m good from here. Thanks for helping me look, Stiles.”

“No problem. See you Wednesday for the usual?”

“Yeah, see you then.”

Stiles waves as Scott scurries off and half turns to look at Derek. “You realize he thinks you’re the killer now, right?”

“Fuck you, he does not.” Derek jams his hands back into his pockets and glares at Stiles. “I _told_ you to stay behind.”

“And yet look how well it turned out for us.” Stiles replies without rancor. “I’m more worried about the asshole running around biting _kids_.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “It’s gathering power for something.”

“Looks that way.” Derek bumps his shoulder into Stiles’. “We’re going back to the house now.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Stiles nods and turns one last mournful look at the dark spot that used to be his Alpha. “Where do you think it moved the body?”

“About half a mile north of here.” Derek frowns. “I found her underneath some bracken. The police will find her today or tomorrow.”

“We’re giving her to the police?” Stiles asks, caught somewhere between horrified and resigned.

Derek shakes his head. “It wasn’t Laura.” He takes a breath. “I don’t know who it is, but she was human and she was dead before the rogue tore her apart.”

“Well.” Stiles buries his fists in his pockets and stares at the bloody ground. Savaging the victim even after death has occurred isn’t normal wolf behavior or even in the range of _abnormal_ wolf behavior. It’s the thing that hunters never understand about the werewolves they put down. When the wolf is in ascendance, a werewolf is more defensive than violent. They retreat from urban centers and vanish into the wilderness. The werewolf who loses itself to its human aspect does the exact opposite. It will seek out intelligent victims and kill for pleasure rather than necessity. A werewolf who loses themselves to their wolf becomes an animal, but the werewolf who loses themselves to the human side becomes a _monster_. “That’s a rage kill.” He says softly.

“Yeah.” Derek agrees with a sour expression.

 

* * *

 

The search party doesn’t find the dead woman for another three days and it wears on both Stiles and Derek’s tempers. They wind up snapping and snarling at each other more the longer it goes on and Scott’s sudden transformation from a pallid asthmatic to a premier athlete is not helping, not when Chris Argent’s darling daughter just transferred in to Beacon Hills High from her swanky private school in Michigan.

Derek doesn’t make Stiles give up his room, but he doesn’t take the Alpha’s suite either. He makes a bed in the basement where all the exercise equipment lives. When he’s not out hunting the Alpha he’s down there pumping iron and jumping off stuff, honing his skills.

Stiles has no idea if Derek’s actually sleeping down there, but he suspects not. The bedding is always exactly how Derek left it that first evening without even the slightest wrinkle in the sheets.

Maybe Derek is just crazily precise when it comes to bed-making, but Stiles really seriously doubts it.

Stiles is shut out of the investigation and normally that wouldn’t stop him or even slow him down all that much, but Derek breaks his arm in three places the second time he catches Stiles disobeying orders. It takes hours to mend even when Derek sets it for him and that’s encouragement enough to stay home and mind his damn knitting.

Likewise, Scott is being a cagey little shit. He still shows up faithfully to tutoring, but he won’t talk much about his sudden status as a lacrosse prodigy. That would require talking about something that isn’t Allison Argent or the big upcoming game.

Stiles always knew his favorite student didn’t have much in the way of self-preservation instincts, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that Scott got in line for another portion of stubborn on the day everyone else was queued up for brains –and as the Full Moon draws closer that’s becoming more and more of a problem.

Derek catches him by the arm when the moon reaches gibbous. Both their tempers have been ever shorter than usual lately and by mutual agreement they’ve been avoiding each other. Derek has been in the basement lifting weights and somersaulting over stuff. Stiles has been writing ahead on the next chapter he has to submit to his editor. He always argues better when the moon is waxing.

“Do you need to be restrained?” He frames the question like it physically pains him. “This is your first moon without Laura.”

Stiles rolls his eyes and tries not to let himself slip backwards in time, back to a shed out in the defunct subdivision on the west side of town, cold iron chains bolted into the ground, and a gag so he doesn’t wake anybody up. “No, it’s not.” He says and holds up a ziplock freezer bag full of a t-shirt that he nicked from his dad’s laundry basket earlier in the day. “I’m good and I’ve got back up just in case.”

Derek takes a cautious sniff of the bag. “… a relative?” He guesses.

“My dad.” Stiles shrugs and hopes it looks like he doesn’t care. “He doesn’t know, but … it helps sometimes.”

“I can stay with you, if you need it.” It’s pretty obvious Derek’s making the offer out of a sense of responsibility. The truth is there’s some big teenage rager at the Martins’ and Scott’s been invited. Stiles has had to hear way too much about it during tutoring hours, _Jesus_ , but he has no idea what his control is going to be like without Laura around to curb him. It’s not safe for him to be out and about.

Besides, he already has to toe a fairly straight and narrow line being openly homosexual and working with teenage boys. Beacon Hills is pretty accepting, but attending wild parties with high schoolers just smacks of being a dumbass.

“Go.” Stiles makes ‘shoo shoo’ motions with his hands. “I’m going to be in the containment cells downstairs. You can let me out in the morning.”

Derek walks him down to the sub-basement and inspects the containment cells with a careful eye while Stiles makes himself comfortable on the padded floor. He affixes the manacles around his wrists and gets into an easy lotus. He’s been able to make it through his monthlies with just breathing exercises and Laura’s scent for the past five years. Time to see how much of that had to do with his Alpha.

Still, it reminds him of Laura a little bit, the way Derek prowls all over the cell tugging on the chains and rattling the bars to see how much they give.

“These are better than what I grew up with.” Derek admits once he’s utterly failed to find a structural flaw.

“Laura sunk some good money into them.” Stiles cracks an eye and manages a smile. “I think she called the old equipment ‘medieval torture chamber chic’.”

Neither of them mention the fact that there are more cells down here than either of them could possibly use. Laura had dreams of expanding the pack. She even had some good candidates picked out, ready to offer them the bite as soon as she was assured they’d chosen to settle permanently in Beacon Hills.

So many dreams … and they’re all gone now.

That startles an amused little chuff out of Derek. “That sounds like her.” He drops an open hand onto Stiles’ short spiked hair. “I’ll look after your friend.” He promises quietly.

“Thanks.” Stiles touches Derek’s wrist without opening his eyes. “You be careful too. The Argents will be out in force tonight looking for the Alpha. I doubt they’ll be in a chatting mood.”

“They’ll have to catch me first.” And there it is, that cocky Hale grin, which never made his toes curl before when he saw it on Laura’s face but does now when paired with Derek’s icy blue eyes and surprisingly adorable overbite.

After that Stiles is left alone with the moon.

He’s glad of the manacles after a few hours as his claws creep out millimeter by millimeter and the itchy persistent anger grows under his skin. He has arguments in his head with people who aren’t even around and it fuels his irritation, but it’s just that; irritation. He’s cranky and annoyed and _uncomfortable_ , but doesn’t feel any particular need to claw up the walls.

Derek returns after the Moon has passed its zenith and is on the descent. He lets himself into Stiles’ cell smelling of Scott, gunpowder, and exertion. He slumps against the rear wall next to Stiles.

“Busy night?” Stiles asks. He’s got a handle on himself now and his voice is almost serene, but Derek’s eyes are all but glowing when he looks up.

“That _kid_.” He rumbles.

“Say no more.” Stiles sighs and takes a deep breath, starting his exercise all over again. By the time he opens his eyes Derek’s already asleep next to him. He lists to one side and sort of flumps against Stiles, who considers the sleeping werewolf for a minute and then lifts his arm so that Derek’s head slides down into his lap. “I _knew_ you weren’t actually sleeping.” He says, but gets no answer beyond a faint whistling snore.

 

* * *

 

Stiles waits until after breakfast to broach the subject of Scott.

For one thing, cooking a big fancy breakfast the morning after Full Moon is part of his routine and for another he needs to load up on carbs and protein every bit as much as Derek does. He might not have shifted, but his body could care less about that. Both their metabolisms will be roaring like a furnace for the next couple of days.

Derek demolishes everything Stiles puts in front of him (turkey bacon, scrambled eggs, a waffle with syrup, butter AND jam, four sardines packed in olive oil, and a fiber/protein smoothie from hell that sets up into fruit flavored concrete unless you finish it fast enough) and watches Stiles with an inscrutable expression from the kitchen table as he rinses the dishes.

“So, I think I should take over Scott-duty.” He ignores the way something clatters on the table behind him. It sounds remarkably like the sugar bowl being knocked over and quickly set to rights.

“ _No_.”

“Look.” Stiles gestures with the scrubby brush and beads of soapy water travel down the inside of his wrist pooling in the crook of his arm. “I’m not asking to be included in the investigation again. I learned my lesson, okay?” A broken arm is very persuasive. “…but splitting your attention between that and keeping Scott in line just asking for trouble.”

“I said no.” Derek growls and the sound comes from directly behind him. When he looks down he can see Derek’s hands braced on the counter top on either side of him and… oh sweet baby Jesus … feel hot breath against the back of his neck.

Stiles flicks soapy water over his shoulder and nails Derek right in the eye because the last thing he wants to deal with this morning in an inappropriate erection, _thanks_. “You realize you aren’t actually my Alpha, right?”

For some reason that makes Derek growl and Stiles goes stiff as teeth graze the exposed plane of his shoulder. Derek mouths the muscle there and then gently bites so that his extended fangs just barely pierce the skin. It feels _better_ than good. It’s hot and heady and electricity under his skin that makes him want to turn around and bare his throat for more of the same. It’s everything his human boyfriends have never been able to give him and everything he should know better than to accept.

“Jesus, _Derek_ …” He chokes off whatever he was going to say next when Derek slides a hand up under his shirt. He’s tempted –oh he’s so very tempted to see where this goes… but he finds the willpower to smack Derek’s wrist. “Oh my god, just because it’s the day after and you’re still horny doesn’t mean I’m on offer!”

Derek’s teeth tighten on his shoulder, but gradually loosen up. He doesn’t, however, let Stiles’ waist go. “It’s not…” His breath is humid against the bite mark, making it sting just a little. “I’m not doing it because you’re fucking _convenient_.” His fingers flex mimicking claws, but his nails stay blunt and human. “You’re the least convenient person I’ve ever met.”

“That’s funny, coming from you.” Stiles growls back as Derek’s fingertips slip under the waist band of his pajama bottoms. This is either the best or _worst_ day to have gone commando. The jury is still out on that one, but the vote edges over into ‘best’ at the sound of Derek’s intrigued rumble when he fails to encounter any boxers in the way of his investigation. “Also, now I’m going to do it no matter what you say. Any objections you have are automatically negated by the presence of your hand down my pants.”

“ _Fine_.” Derek nips his shoulder again with blunt teeth, right where he drew a little blood before with fangs.

It’s dumb. It’s maybe the stupidest thing Stiles has ever done, but right now he can’t quite make himself care. The only important thing to him right now, at this very second, is the fact that when he turns around in Derek’s arm and tilts his head back Derek presses a kiss against his mouth, another against his jaw, and then gently licks at his pulse point before taking it in-between his teeth.

Something between a whimper and a keen escapes through Stiles’ gritted teeth and it takes him a while (what with Derek’s roaming hands) to find his voice again. “Okay, yeah… you need to take me upstairs now.”

Derek stills like the concept of ‘bed’ just occurred to him and Stiles ducks out under his arm.

“Come on, Sourpatch.” He grins, knowing his eyes are probably burning right now and yet finding it very hard to care. “Upstairs.”

After that Derek doesn’t pretend to sleep in the basement anymore and Stiles still doesn’t have to move his books; an all-around win.

 

* * *

 

Scott takes the news about as well as Stiles could have expected, that is to say with wide betrayed eyes.

“You’re one too?” He’s backing slowly away from the table they use at the public library for tutoring sessions.

“I’ve been one since I was younger than you are.” Stiles doesn’t chase him. It’ll only confirm Scott’s instinct to run and if he has to guess, Scott wound up with a powerful set of instincts; stronger than most newbies get. It’s probably why he’s still alive.

“Why?” Scott all but wails. The librarian shushes them and Scott drops his volume back down to inside levels. “Why would you want all this? It’s _awful_!”

“Beats the hell out of dying of juvenile cancer.” Stiles shrugs and politely ignores Scott’s guilty flinch. “You were like _two_ when it happened. You had no way of knowing, but yeah. My mom and I both had this rare genetic condition. She made friends with the woman who was Alpha around here at the time and she offered us the bite …but only I made the change all the way. She… didn’t.” It’s hard to talk about, even now. He’d been so _sure_ –just like most kids are when it’s their mom on the line- that luck will be merciful. “It’s harder to survive the bite the older you get and she’d been in chemo for a while by that point so she was pretty weak to begin with. The best success rate is in preteens and teenagers. It’s literally the _one_ thing that puberty makes easier.”

Scott has been inching back towards the table bit by bit while Stiles talks and even he has to laugh a bit at that. “It doesn’t feel easy.” He admits as slides back into his seat.

“That’s because you’ve never seen a hard change. It can be a lot worse.” Stiles tells him. “Compared to some, you’re taking to it very well.”

“Are all wolves like –you know.” Scott makes a half-flail half- _rowr_ face that is apparently supposed to represent Derek. “ _Him_?”

“Nah.” Stiles waves it off. “He’s kind of hardcore even for us. When Laura was still alive she was always getting calls all the time from the Brooklyn Alpha bitching because he kept scaring emissaries from other packs or beating up the top Betas when they’d pick on the bottom rung wolves… or sometimes he’d just be standing in a room perfectly quiet and not really doing anything while someone else was in there and when they turned around bam! There’s Derek. _Staring_ at them.” Stiles pauses. “Come to think of it, Laura got that call a _lot_.”

“So… all the looming and showing up in people’s bedrooms…” Scott frowns. “It’s just because he’s a _weirdo_? Not because he’s a werewolf?”

“Yeah, pretty much.” Stiles does not want to know about the ‘lurking in teenagers’ bedrooms’ thing, but he’s probably going to have a conversation with Derek about it anyway. It’s like he _wants_ to have the law put a sign out in their front yard. “I’ve been like this since before you knew me. Can you tell I’m one at all?”

“I’m not really convinced you are one _now_ , actually.” Scott looks him over, eyes lingering on Stiles’ novelty tee and hipster scarf. “You don’t smell different than anyone else.”

Stiles flexes his claws for Scott’s benefit and the teen’s eyes fly wide open. He grins with a hint of fang. “So, want to learn how to control it?”

Scott gulps and nods.

 

* * *

 

“You got him to quit lacrosse?” Derek looks reluctantly impressed over his hamburger.

They’re sitting out in Derek’s Camaro with two bags from In-N-Out. Stiles is like 73% sure this is a date and when Derek does the stretch-yawn-arm-around-the-shoulders thing he raises it up to 86%. The lingering 14% is because they’re parked outside the warehouse district and Stiles’ radio scanner is set up on the dash.

“Not easily, but apparently he almost wolfed out on his girlfriend the other day after a game.” Stiles sighs and leans into Derek’s side. “I told him he’s got to manage his aggression. Every bit of self-control he uses on the field is control he won’t have, say, the next time he gets in a fight with his mom. Besides, his mysteriously cured asthma is something the Hunters tend to look for. It’s not like they won’t hurt his mom to flush him out. I took him through some breathing and visualization exercises, but I’m pretty sure he’s thinking about his girlfriend instead of colored light.”

“Figures.” Derek grumbles. “That’ll backfire soon.”

“Maybe.” Stiles allows. “For now I’m just going to let him get used to the feeling of _being_ in control. We’ll work on the specifics later of how he does it later. Some control is better than none.”

“Agree to disagree on that.” Derek taps the radio scanner, pausing it on a semi-promising channel that turns out to just be a trucker. “He’ll change his mind by tomorrow.”

“It’s possible.” Stiles grins. “…but I may have pointed out that if he’s off lacrosse then he’s free to take up an afterschool activity with Allison.” He lets his head roll onto Derek’s shoulder and wiggles his eyebrows. “I have some experience when it comes to getting teens to do the right thing.”

Derek’s eyebrow crawl up towards his hairline and he opens his mouth to say something and it’s almost halfway towards being a smile when the scanner skitters across the channel they’ve been looking for. They both lunge for the scanner at once and Stiles gets there first, scrolling back until they can hear hunters chattering back and forth with one another.

They listen for a while, but it seems like the hunters in question are hirelings of the Argent family and they’re just patrolling for right now. No one seems to be on high alert, which means they haven’t spotted the rogue yet tonight nor do they seem to be expecting it.

“Thank God for lazy bastards.” Stiles mutters.

“Either that or Argent is using them as bait.” Derek murmurs. “They’re wandering around in plain sight while there’s a dangerous feral running around. Argent probably has the people he can afford to lose pounding the pavement.”

“Ugh, you’re probably right.” Stiles agrees reluctantly. It’s not that he is emotionally invested in the lives of people who have made it their life’s work to hunt people like him down and cut them in half, but one of the things he cannot forget –that he cannot ever _allow_ himself to forget on pain of de-humanizing the hunters the way they have de-humanized him- is that they are people too. It’s just: right now he is sitting in a car waiting for a soul to be snuffed out so that he knows where to seek his prey.

Derek jostles his shoulder. “Stop thinking so hard.” He murmurs into Stiles’ ear. “Whatever it is, stop.”

“Nope. That would be a mistake.” Stiles leans into him anyway. “Just reminding myself that there are people out there. People who want people like us dead, yes, but still …people.”

 


	9. From Ashes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The big fire of 2006 starts on the outskirts of town at the old Hale House and shouldn’t have spread, but it’s been a dry year and Beacon county doesn’t have the kind of taxpayer money for the same kind of fire prevention oversight that they have in other parts of the state. The night air carries sparks away from the fire and they catch among the dry leaves littering the private woodlands surrounding the Hale property.
> 
> Ironically this is what saves the Hale family because the arsonists are too busy trying to put out the smaller fires to notice when David Hale pulls the loose bars out of the basement window and pushes his youngest niece out through the gap. Rebecca is what the Hales call a ‘throwback’ for reasons that have nothing to do with her bright coppery blonde hair and the mountain ash circle keeping the rest of the family trapped inside doesn’t hamper her in the slightest.
> 
> David and his brother Peter have half the family out before Kate Argent and her accomplices even notice something is wrong. The police get back just enough of the arsonists to prosecute.

The big fire of 2006 starts on the outskirts of town at the old Hale House and shouldn’t have spread, but it’s been a dry year and Beacon county doesn’t have the kind of taxpayer money for the same kind of fire prevention oversight that they have in other parts of the state. The night air carries sparks away from the fire and they catch among the dry leaves littering the private woodlands surrounding the Hale property.

Ironically this is what saves the Hale family because the arsonists are too busy trying to put out the smaller fires to notice when David Hale pulls the loose bars out of the basement window and pushes his youngest niece out through the gap. Rebecca is what the Hales call a ‘throwback’ for reasons that have nothing to do with her bright coppery blonde hair and the mountain ash circle keeping the rest of the family trapped inside doesn’t hamper her in the slightest.

David and his brother Peter have half the family out before Kate Argent and her accomplices even notice something is wrong. The police get back just enough of the arsonists to prosecute.

Fourteen families die in the big fire and Kate Argent has to be tried in another county because it’s impossible for the court to find an impartial jury in Beacon Hills. She’s found guilty anyway, but it’s cold comfort to the bereaved and to the eight children orphaned by the fire.

The California foster system is overloaded at the best of times and the Mayor of Beacon Hills pulls as many strings as he dares to keep the kids from being taken away or split up from their siblings. An outpouring of goodwill from the community helps and most of the children find new homes almost immediately. It’s practically a miracle …but not every miracle is perfect.

Stiles is hard to adopt. He has hyperactivity issues and expensive medication that a lot of insurance plans just won’t cover. Even his friend, Scott who has asthma and a congenital lung defect, adopts out faster than Stiles just because he’s a sweet personable kid. Stiles is not that personable. He’s got a finely honed sense of sarcasm even at the tender age of ten and has been emotionally brittle ever since his mother died a few years ago. Things were starting to get better through therapy and his father’s constant efforts …but then the fire happened. Sheriff Stilinski isn’t the only first responder to die that night, but sometimes it feels that way for Stiles.

He’s been sleeping in the hospital for three days (for smoke inhalation and a very poorly disguised suicide watch) when Talia Hale is allowed into the room he shares with three other patients, all of them much older than he is.

Stiles knows of the Hales. Everyone does at this point, but his dad made a point of being friendly with the local supernaturals especially the nearest werepack. The Hales are weathering some public backlash (horrible blame-the-victim mentality stuff) but the fact of the matter is that your chances of dying as collateral damage from a Hunt outnumber your chances of being attacked by a werewolf by a factor of twenty. This is the worst Hunt to go wrong in the past five years and it’s all over the news.

If Talia cares about that, Stiles can’t tell. She crouches by his bed in soot stained blue jeans and a pair of foam flip flops that are obviously new from the dollar store.

“You’re coming home with me.” She tells him with one hand clasped around the back of his neck. She turns his head so that he has to look her in the eyes. Maybe it’s his imagination or sleep deprivation, but Stiles could swear her eyes glimmer with red light as she speaks to him. “This isn’t pity or charity. I don’t want you because no one else does. I want you because we’ve both lost something in this mess. I think we can help each other get through it. Are you willing to give me a chance?”

“Yeah.” Stiles croaks with his ruined voice not because he wants to, but he’s so desperately lonely and wants out of this ward full of the dead and dying so bad he’d do anything to escape. Fortunately all he has to do is let Talia bundle him into the only clothing he has left and her husband David helps him down to the car. They have to stop a few times, but Stiles makes it and falls asleep curled up in the backseat.

 

* * *

 

The Hales have a suite of rooms at the local Motel 6 and are sleeping four to a room. Peter is talking to someone who has a house to rent over on Hollyrose street. It’s far from ideal and way too close to the rest of town, but it’ll have to do while the main house is being rebuilt.

Stiles is sharing a room with Talia and David’s kids, all of whom are older than he is. Laura is two months away from leaving for college at NYU, but he’s heard hushed conversations between her and her mother. Laura thinks she should stay until things are settled, but Talia refuses to let Laura postpone her education or take out anymore loans than she already has. Jamie is seventeen and going through a Phase. Stiles isn’t sure what Phase it is, but it seems to involve listening to her headphones 24/7 and wearing a lot of black. Derek is sixteen and hasn’t spoken a single solitary word to anyone that Stiles has heard, which is awkward because they have to share a bed. Stiles is pretty sure Derek hasn’t slept once since his house burned down. He has great dark bruises under each eye and walks around with his shoulders hunched up around his ears.

Ironically, they end up spending a lot of time around each other. It’s more for protective coloration than anything else because neither of them are allowed to spend much (if any) time alone. If they hang around each other then no one has to talk and no one is following after them trying to make them eat or say something.

Stiles is usually a talker, but he hasn’t said much of anything since his dad died. It’s partially because he can’t, but mostly because he doesn’t want to. He feels like his voice box burned alongside his dad and the words just don’t come like they once did. Sometimes it feels like he’s drowning in the silence and he’s woken up more than once drenched in a cold sweat with his teeth chattering. If Derek notices, he doesn’t say or do anything. Stiles can’t tell if that helps or hinders, but it helps to listen to the soft breathing of three other people in the room.

 

* * *

 

Stile has his first panic attack in three years on the way to his father’s funeral. Peter pulls the car over to the shoulder in a screech of tires that leaves black streaks on the asphalt and hauls Stiles out of the backseat in order to make him put his head between his knees and breathe until the ringing in his ears dies down and his vision clears.

“Breathe with me.” He murmurs and breathes, steady and strong. “In…1…2…3…out…1…2…3.” His hands are broad and strong on Stiles’ shoulder even though they still tremor sometimes, mostly when someone tries to give him condolences about the death of his wife. His daughters cluster in close to him with that happens, as though they’re keeping him from flying away with their tiny bodies. “Nothing can harm you now. We won’t let it.”

“I…” Stiles can’t make the words happen, but Peter seems to get the gist of what he’s trying to say anyway.

“It’s all right, Stiles.” Peter folds him into a hug and pats the back of his head. He isn’t Stiles father, but he wears the same aftershave and has the same lean build. If he closes his eyes and leans into the embrace, Stiles can pretend… just for a second… that it was all just a dream.

“It’s all right.” Peter says again and it’s not entirely clear whether he’s talking to Stiles or himself.

 

* * *

 

The house on Hollyrose is four blocks away from Stiles’ old house, not that it matters. You can’t really pick out where it used to be among the blackened bones that are all that remain of his neighborhood.

“We won’t be here long.” Talia promises him and her nose crinkles. As bad as it is for him, Stiles wonders how bad it is for Talia and her family who can probably still smell the lingering traces of blistered flesh on the autumn air.

There are enough bedrooms that they don’t have to quadruple up anymore, especially once Laura heads out for her dormitory. Stiles ends up sharing with Derek again and Talia tries to make them both decorate, to put a personal stamp on their space even if it’s just temporary. She leaves a catalog in their room with orders to pick out some linens and curtains. Derek is completely unresponsive and Stiles forges his handwriting on the order slip for a dark green coverlet and pinstripe sheets just to erase the wrinkle between Talia’s eyes.

When the order arrives, Stiles strips the plain white hospital sheets off both their beds, remakes them, and puts up some posters he got for cheap on the internet. He has a vague notion that Derek likes baseball, but no clue which teams so he puts a Roberto Alomar poster on Derek’s side of the room because the Mets are awesome. On his side of the room he puts up a poster for Call of Duty 2 because there are some good memories there of playing with Scott with his dad puttering with paperwork at the kitchen table.

Talia hugs them both that night when she sees the end result and Stiles feels guilty for making him and Derek look more mentally stable than they probably are, but Derek stops him when he’s stumbling towards the bathroom to brush his teeth that night with a soft hoarse “Thank you” that Stiles can barely hear.

“No big, man.” He says and his voice cracks in the middle of it. He winced and rubs his throat. He’s supposed to be talking more to condition his vocal chords, but he can’t make himself do it.

There’s a bottle of chloroseptic spray on his pillow when he gets back to the room, but Derek’s gone.

 

* * *

 

School is the great equalizer. The year starts out a bit subdued, but it doesn’t take long for the status quo from last year to reestablish itself and this year Stiles doesn’t have his voice to defend himself with as much. It’s less ruined than it was, but he still can’t go long without ending his words on a squeak or a grunt. Stiles is on his own in middle school with none of the Hales around. Laura is off taking NYU’s pre-law program by storm, Derek and Jamie are in high school, and Peter’s kids attend a swanky magnet school for the arts on the other side of town.

Talia is furious the first time he comes home with a split lip and David sits him down for a very serious talk about Bullies and Breaking the Code of Silence, but David has never been a runty ten year old with a massively overdue growth spurt with noodles for arms. As bad as it now, it’ll only get worse if he talks.

He’s mostly used to sticking to crowds and staying within sight of an adult at all times, but his luck can’t hold out forever and one day he finds himself alone in the courtyard outside the library with Jackson Whittemore and two of his idiot friends closing in on him. Danny Mahealani is nowhere to be seen so no help will coming from that quarter.

A crumpled up paper ball bounces off the side of Jackson’s head as he goes to put Stiles in a headlock and they all look up to see Jamie crouched on top of the wall that Stiles is backed up against. “Now I _know_ this isn’t what it looks like.” She says and cracks her gum with sharp teeth.

“Mind your own business.” Jackson is mouthing off because he hasn’t ever met a boundary he won’t try to push. That may be something that’s about to change.

“This is our business.”

When Stiles looks away from Jamie, its Derek who’s standing behind Jackson looming like death himself at sixteen holding Jackson’s friends by the scruff.

“Run home right now.” Jamie instructs Jackson. “Take your friends with you and talk fast. My Alpha is going to be giving your parents a call.”

Derek folds a hand around the back of Stiles’ neck as they walk away from the school. Jamie is whistling some Lady Gaga song, well pleased with herself as she thumbs through her playlist. She’s already called home and it’s doubtful that Jackson’s going to make it to his parents in time to beat Talia’s call.

They stop at the drugstore for ice cream bars and David is waiting for them on the front porch when they get home. He kisses Jamie on the forehead and pulls Derek into a powerful hug. Stiles is considering the best way to get inside the house without interrupting the family moment when David catches him and slings him over one broad shoulder. It turns out Talia got burgers and curly fries as a special dinner.

Jamie is the one who hauls him onto the couch for enforced cuddles and television. Peter’s girls pile onto his legs and even Derek takes a cautious seat on the arm for like five whole minutes before having to leave and comb his hair or something.

Stiles relaxes into it and for the first time in a while, he’s got something to smile about.


	10. Nothing Like a Sactuary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles wakes up in Medical and cannot feel much of anything below his shoulders. His head is foggy and feels like it’s rolling around on his shoulders so he’s pretty sure the numbness is from some seriously good shit and not, say, paralysis.
> 
> Also he seems to be strapped down.
> 
> “Hey.” He squints at the attending doctor, a middle-aged man with skin the color of good Kona coffee and a shaved head. “Heeeeey.” For some reason his voice is coming out in a squeaky whisper and he sounds even to himself like he is high off his nut (probably because he is.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, DARK. This is dark and triggery and deals with non-con themes. Proceed with caution!!!

Stiles wakes up in Medical and cannot feel much of anything below his shoulders. His head is foggy and feels like it’s rolling around on his shoulders so he’s pretty sure the numbness is from some seriously good shit and not, say, _paralysis_.

Also he seems to be strapped down.

“Hey.” He squints at the attending doctor, a middle-aged man with skin the color of good Kona coffee and a shaved head. “ _Heeeeey_.” For some reason his voice is coming out in a squeaky whisper and he sounds even to himself like he is high off his nut (probably because he _is_.)

The man puts down whatever the hell it is he’s doing and comes over to hunker down by Stiles’ cot. “You’re awake, I see. Feeling any pain?” He investigates Stiles’ pupils with a pen light and digs one of his wrists out from under the sheets to check his pulse.

“Nnnnope.” Stiles draws out the word because he finds he likes the way the letter ‘n’ lingers in his mouth, caught between the tip of his tongue and the roof of his mouth. “Hey.” He wiggles against his restraints. “What’m’I in for, Doc? D’I roll the Jeep finally?”

No …wait … the Jeep’s gone, isn’t it? Gone with his dad and his hometown and his house and his friends. All of it; gone in the ever encroaching creep of the Commonwealth’s borders and …oh yeah…

“I got picked, didn’t I?” The wispy tendrils of fog are clearing out of his brainpan and he’s starting to remember; being shackled to the wall, the massive shape in the darkness that his brain refused to accept as anything alive, luminous eyes like Bunsen burners in the shade, hot moist breath on his back…

“ _Don’t think about it_.” The doctor pins him down as Stiles starts to thrash against his restraint. “Don’t think about it. _Not now_.”

The restraints are making a lot more sense now. Stiles is pretty sure that if he could move his arms then he’d be trying to claw his skin off. How many deaths did it take, he wonders, before the Commonwealth caught on?

Probably not that many. The Wolf Corps form the core of the Commonwealth’s military power and anything that jeopardizes their control of the werewolves is swiftly and ruthlessly dealt with and (oh god) Stiles is now part of that control.

“Can you kill me?” He asks breathlessly and for once in his life it is _not_ a joke. He doesn’t want to live as a part of the machine that destroyed his home and is destroying the rest of his home _land_. “Make it look like an accident, _anything_.”

“I’m sorry, child.” The doctor _looks_ like he is too, like there’s a weight the size of fucking Pluto bearing down on his shoulders. Atlas couldn’t look more burdened than this man. “They watch me too closely. You have to live.”

_You_ have _to live_.

The words are echoing still in Stiles head when the next round of narcotics hit his veins through the little automatic dispensary hooked up to his IV drip. It figures they wouldn’t give the Doctor direct control of any drugs if they could help it.

“What’s your name?” He asks as his eyes flutter shut and a chill spreads through his veins followed by warmth.

“Alan Deaton.” The man replies and Stiles thinks maybe he can feel a warm dry hand stroking his temple as he fades away into darkness.

 

* * *

 

Stiles spends two weeks in Medical recuperating from his first … time. By the end of it he’s able to walk without opening any wounds, albeit not quickly or with any grace. Then again he hadn’t been very graceful to begin with so there’s that.

They move him into what he thinks of as a cell block, but in reality it bears more resemblance to a hospital wing or a dormitory. Most of the building is made up of individual rooms, but there’s a lounge area and a cafeteria on the first two floors. Someone has set up a very limited gymnasium in the basement just one level above the containment cells. Twice a day they’re let out into a yard walled in with razor wire and chain-link fences to get a little sun

It’s nothing like a sanctuary, but a lot like a prison.

There’s not much in the way of reading material, considering the fact that the Commonwealth is too busy taking over North America to get around to making an approved reading list for its reluctant citizens. Right now most everything that isn’t strictly educational is banned as seditious material.

Most of his fellow inmates aren’t much for conversation. Nine-tenths of them wander around hollow-eyed and doped up to the gills on the mood stabilizers the ‘nurses’ hand out like freaking Pez dispensers. Stiles ends up meeting up and making sort-of friends with a sweet-faced girl by the name of Allison and her terrifying( _ly hot_ ) friend, Lydia. Stiles and his libido still aren’t on speaking terms, but even he can appreciate Lydia. You know, from a safe distance.

Allison doesn’t talk much. She’s one of the rare lifers who’s been in the Commonwealth since it was formed in the late 90s. She hasn’t said as much, but he’s pretty sure she was one of the hostages taken from the big Hunter families early in the war to keep them from decimating the werewolf population before the Commonwealth could catch enough Alphas to keep their ranks up. She just happened to turn up as a Receptive. Some of the things she’s said implies she’s on her second mate, the first having died in the fighting. Stiles is pretty sure she doesn’t miss him, but she has this oddly soft expression in her eyes when she talks about her current partner.

“I don’t see him often.” She confides to Stiles one evening. Its pudding night in the cafeteria so there’s a little bit of privacy in the lounge. Inasmuch as there is any privacy anywhere in the compound anyway. Lydia is tucked up near them with an enormous dry book on advanced mathematical theorems which she’s already read twice and is using as a cover to keep an eye on the ‘nurse’ who’s watching them. “The Brass will let them visit us if they perform well or do extra work sometimes, but my guy is …well. He tries hard, but the Commonwealth values good results over good intentions, you know?”

The gorge rises in Stiles’ throat as he thinks back to… _no_. Better not. Otherwise the pills are going to start looking awfully good.

“He visits you, like… _that_?” He trails off and the expression on his face probably says more than his mouth ever could because Allison puts a hand over his.

“They’re not… you understand they aren’t always like that?” She says softly. “They’re not even like that _usually_. They’re people just like us only with extra benefits. Those benefits just come with a price.” She runs her tongue over her lips. “ _We’re_ that price. It’s not ...”

Lydia closes her book with a thump when the nurse starts wandering a little closer, clearly interested in their conversation, and they have to break it off.

“You should go get some dessert, loves.” She says with a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “You need to keep your strength up. Full Moon is coming.”

That it is, Stiles thinks and swallows hard on the knot in his throat. _That it is_.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s his first Full Moon in the containment cells, but he’s familiar with the routine from his ‘introduction’. He’s one of the group that gets rounded up early and issued a tiny six ounce tube of petroleum jelly. (No one calls it Vaseline anymore. The Commonwealth frowns on using the old brand names; branding is antisocial commercialism and as such is undesirable in a stable, people-focused society.) They’re given a little privacy in which to use it before the guards come to collect them.

Stiles’ guard herds him into his cell and shackles him to the wall with his back facing the door. His arms aren’t pinned over his head this time so there’s that small relief, but they’re on a short chain that’s bolted low on the wall so either way he’s forced to kneel.

He can hear the sound of shuffling feet and clanging metal in the distance as the guards shuffle around and load everyone in. He has a vague notion that they’ll let the wolves in one by one and trigger the cell doors from a distance.

Eventually the steps fall silent and all is still. Somewhere in the darkness he can hear something scraping against the cement floor and a door clangs open. Nothing moves in his cell so it must not have been his door.

Half an hour grinds by in the scratch of claws and the banging of metal on cement. Someone is crying out there in the darkness, harsh and broken sobs that dwindle into nothingness. Stiles has to check his face for dampness just to make sure it’s not him.

He knows from talking to Allison that they don’t let the wolves in all at once. The guards admit one at a time and open that wolf’s Receptive by remote. Once that wolf has found their… their mate then it’s onto the next.

Stiles’ gate creaks up almost at once. He doesn’t know if that means his wolf ranks high enough to cut to the front of the line or if his name just begins with an A, but Stiles can hear him breathe in the hush. Soft footsteps scuff the concrete behind him and the gate falls. Stiles glares at the ground because he knows how much power he’s got here. Engaging the wolf would just be giving him more.

There’s a rustle of fabric and the sound of a body moving, but nobody touches Stiles. The air around him remains still and the only sign that he’s not alone is the wolf’s nearly inaudible breath.

Minutes grind one by one, then ten, then surely at least twenty, and finally Stiles cracks just enough to steal a peek.

His wolf is sitting with his back to the wall and his face turned resolutely towards the gate, away from Stiles. He’s fully human, which Stiles wasn’t expecting. The thing that caught him in the open yard where the Commonwealth soldiers had herded all the refugees from Beacon Hills into hoping one of them would turn up Receptive looked like a nightmare, more starving dog than person. Stiles knows, logically, that werewolves start out human. Even born ones are just infected with lycanthropy in the womb. It different, being confronted with the reality of that.

The wolf turns, just enough for Stiles to catch a glimmer of his cold blue eyes.

Stiles really wishes he didn’t know what blue eyes on a wolf meant.

“I’m not going to touch you.” The wolf tells him. “Sleep if you want.”

Stiles considers it, but the configuration of his chains means his only option would be to lay down curled around his wrists on the hard cured concrete. “They didn’t really tie me up with comfort in mind.” His mouth gets started without his actual permission and Stiles flinches.

The wolf turns again, interested despite himself it seems. “They chained you?” His glowing eyes flick down to the cuffs on Stiles’ wrists. Emotion flicks through his face, a tick in his cheek and a flash of fanged teeth. He creeps over, preternaturally silent and graceful, and holds up a single clawed finger when Stiles tries to pull away. The wolf pulls the metal base clean out of its moorings with one hand and picks apart the chains on Stiles wrists like they were made out of paper mache.

He doesn’t touch Stiles even to get the cuffs off and retreats back to the gate as soon as absolutely possible.

“Sleep.” He says facing away from Stiles. “It’ll get loud soon.”

Stiles finds a vent on the other side of the cell where there’s a little warm air. It’s better than nothing and he supposes the Commonwealth anticipated him having a werewolf to keep him warm tonight. “How much do you remember of what happened in the yard?” He doesn’t know why he asks. Maybe it’s something about the way the wolf holds himself, stiff with something that would be fear in anybody else.

The wolf doesn’t look back at him, but he answers. “Some.” He rasps and his fists tighten a little on his knees. “Now.”

“You didn’t before?” Stiles curls into himself. He doesn’t remember much of the actual attack either beyond a few brutal snapshots. He can’t decide if that’s a mercy yet or not. His imagination was always too good for ignorance to be much bliss.

“No.” The wolf lets his head tip back against the wall. His expression is a wasteland of good emotions made all the worse by the fact that he is actually kind of beautiful, for a guy anyway. He’s got a strong jaw and the sort of sculpted cheek bones that only truly goofy-looking kids seem to get, maybe as an apology from Mother Nature for the horrors of puberty.

Stiles feels his hands curl into fists as he contemplates the wolf. He might have understood what happened on a conceptual level if the guy had been ugly or vicious or anything other than what he appears to be, which is hot and suffering from the sexy kind of depression. He could have had anyone other than Stiles, someone willing even. Stiles has seen the kind of perks that volunteers get in the compound.

“ _Why?_ ” Stiles hisses and means ‘Why me, why like that, why did _any_ of this have to happen?’

The wolf turns his face away again and doesn’t answer for a while. When he does, Stiles can barely hear him. “The Commonwealth figured out how to control some of us using our anchors. Anchors don’t have to be people and mine wasn’t so I fought them. I didn’t want to be under their control.” He’s quiet for a moment. “I guess they found a way to make me.”

He falls silent and hunches away from Stiles. It’s pretty clear that the conversation is over and right then that Stiles realizes, a crystalline moment of perfect comprehension, that he isn’t the only rape victim in the cell.

“Jesus.” He wheezes, not sure if he wants to laugh or cry or scream until his lungs give out. “It was a _two-for-one_.”

 


	11. The Best Laid Plans of Wolves and Wizards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It starts out as an idea for like the best prank ever. Deaton rolls his eyes when Stiles asks to borrow the manuscript like this is a phase every kind-of-sort-of apprentice goes through and –who knows- maybe it is.
> 
> However it’s a useful phase, Stiles thinks, because mastering this technique is labor intensive as all get out. There is no ‘be the spark’ to this. There are three new meditation techniques, an abusive relationship with Gray’s Updated Anatomy, and being like fourteen sparks because one alone won’t do it.
> 
> Deep down, Stiles knows he’s probably never going to actually pull off this particular trick. It’s a great idea in theory but it’d be hella embarrassing in reality. Still, imagining the look on Scott’s face is a nice bit of motivation when the hours grind on a little too long and his attention starts to fray.
> 
> It never occurred to him that Deaton thought he wouldn’t be able to pull it off either until Stiles finds him in his back room and makes a little turn with her arms outstretched so he can get the full view.
> 
> “Hey, Doc. Whaddya think?” She asks and Deaton drops the binder he was paging through.

It starts out as an idea for like the _best prank ever_. Deaton rolls his eyes when Stiles asks to borrow the manuscript like this is a phase every kind-of-sort-of apprentice goes through and –who knows- maybe it is.

However it’s a useful phase, Stiles thinks, because mastering this technique is labor intensive as all get out. There is no ‘be the spark’ to this. There are three new meditation techniques, an abusive relationship with Gray’s Updated Anatomy, and being like _fourteen_ sparks because one alone won’t do it.

Deep down, Stiles knows he’s probably never going to actually pull off this particular trick. It’s a great idea in theory but it’d be hella embarrassing in reality. Still, imagining the look on Scott’s face is a nice bit of motivation when the hours grind on a little too long and his attention starts to fray.

It never occurred to him that Deaton thought he wouldn’t be able to pull it off either until Stiles finds him in his back room and makes a little turn with her arms outstretched so he can get the full view.

“Hey, Doc. Whaddya think?” She asks and Deaton drops the binder he was paging through.

Give the man credit, he doesn’t stay flabbergasted for long and after some very startled blinking he sets his mind toward critiquing the hell out of Stiles’ new girl-shape.

“Smaller breasts, Stiles.” He says, poking Stiles directly in her right boob. “The fat also extends underneath the arm. What you have here is what an implant would look like.”

“Well, screw that.” Stiles says and squints into a square of mirror glued to the cinderblock wall because that was _not_ what she was going for. Okay … _yeah_ , she can see it now. They look a bit like water balloons stuck under her skin. She’d copied the breasts out of a magazine, which (in retrospect) was kind of dumb. She focuses her attention on letting the spark ripple through her skin and re-shape the flesh there with the broad strokes of her magic.

Scaling the breasts down winds up being difficult because she originally used her chest and ass for places to relocate displaced mass. It’s kind of why her knockers look like giant inflated cartoon boobs. Again, not Stiles’ best idea, but she trimmed her height down by nearly three inches and girls don’t tend to carry as much muscle as guys do so even his modest muscle tone had to go.

“Strengthen your core muscles.” Deaton advises. “Make them denser and more compact. You can also harden your skeleton.”

Stiles does all that and still has some extra leftover, which annoys the shit out of her until she thinks do mess around with her hair. She gives herself great big bouncy brown curls in a jaw-length bob. It looks a little bit like shampoo commercial hair when she pulls on one of the coils and it springs back into place. Normal hair doesn’t have quite that tensile strength, but Stiles isn’t a real girl so who cares?

“Much better.” Deaton nods his approval and Stiles surveys her altered shape in the mirror. “Now, for the love of all that’s holy, please put a shirt on before I get arrested.”

She’s on the slender side with small perky breasts and gently rounded hips. Deaton didn’t make her alter her features at all, which are really just a slightly feminized version of Stiles’ real face. She futzed with the cheekbones some and replaced her moles with a light dusting of golden freckles over her nose, but other than that it’s all her. _Him_. Whichever.

(For some reason though Stiles’ eyes look _huge_ on a girl’s face. Are they normally that big? Well, who cares.)

“Killjoy.” Stiles says and snags her shirt off the back of the chair where she flung it upon entering. “I told you I’d master this spell.”

“Yes, you did.” Deaton allows. “Clearly I’ve been allowing you to slack in your studies if this is what you’re able to accomplish when you put your mind to it. Are you able to change back?”

Stiles grins and releases …something. He doesn’t really have a word for what it is, except it’s tense as a taut wire when he’s changed and he has to think about staying in the form he’s in into after too long. His bones lighten up and stretch as he relaxes into his own shape. “ _Oh_ yeah.”

“Good. That means you can get started on the next volume of runes.” Deaton says with a benign smile. “I want to see you put together a full map of the third circle of Jove by next Tuesday.”

_Figures_.

 

* * *

 

As tactics to keep Stiles from causing trouble with his new girl shape go, Deaton’s is pretty effective. Most of his teachers have never caught onto the method of using crippling workloads to keep him occupied. He’s never missed turning in an assignment since the first grade and by now ‘anal’ doesn’t quite cover his approach to his coursework. It’s pretty much the whole reason he hasn’t flunked out of high school by now.

… it’s kind of the reason Scott, Erica, and Isaac haven’t flunked out either. Between Stiles and Boyd they have plenty of opportunity to copy. Lydia, though, has literally broken the fingers of people trying to borrow her homework.

Well, she had Jackson do it but either way it ended badly.

“That is _definitely_ not our calculus homework.” Erica observes, peering over Stiles’ shoulder where he’s hunched over at the stack of crates and plywood that serves the subway station as a makeshift kitchen. Right now it’s covered over with broad sheets of newsprints, screw-top vials full of homemade inks, two compasses, a slide rule, and an astrolabe.

“It’s in my backpack. Red folder. Tell the others that if they get any fingerprints on it, I will feed the offending party to Derek.” He replies absently and completely misses it when she drops a fond kiss on his forehead, leaving a big red lipstick stain behind.

Derek smacks him upside the head, but it’s a light touch that doesn’t even jar him so maybe Derek doesn’t actually mind being used as the pack boogeyman. It must appeal to his not-so-secret desire to be feared by all.

“What is that?” Derek has this way of asking Stiles questions like he feels like he ought to know the answer, but he really doesn’t want to, while at the same time he fears what will happen if he doesn’t find out.

(Actually, come to think of it, Stiles hears that particular tone a lot and not just from Derek.)

“It’s the greater arc of Jove.” Stiles checks his runes against the diagram and… _fuck_. His northern quadrant is off by forty-five degrees. Awesome. “Or it’s supposed to be. Right now it’s a _mess_.”

“Is it going to help us gather intelligence on hunter movements in town?”

“Not right away, but it’ll keep Deaton off my back and continuing to teach me stuff so; indirectly yes.” Stiles starts taking measurements, trying to see which parts of his current attempt are salvageable. He can trace them through the newsprint and redo the parts that are complete and utter shit. “Also, we need to get some walkie talkies or a radio scanner. Maybe we can find the channels they use to communicate.”

“… and if they’re using cellphones?” Derek counters.

“Not for an extended hunt unless whatever they’re doing can be finished before someone has to find a charge cord since that whole ‘push2talk’ thing never really caught on. Two-way radios have better battery life and no-one’s position gets given away when they forget to put their phone on silent.” Stiles glances over his shoulder, but Derek’s poking at the communal tablet PC and… ah. He’s got the Best Buy website up.

_Win_!

Stiles goes back to his chart, but he’s still turning the hunter problem over in the back of his head. The thing is, it’s not like they can put a watch on the new guys in town. The jerks knocked over one of Chris Argent’s bolt holes early on and got their hands on some of the Agent family records so they know who the local wolves are.

That’s what the _problem_ is.

Right now they’re waiting for Derek or one of his wolves to put a foot out of line to give them the excuse they want to put the whole pack down, but they’re not going to wait forever. Sooner or later someone is going to come up with the bright idea of giving the wolves a little push, just up to the edge so it’ll be that much easier to put a toe over it.

In theory this is a hunter conflict. The new guys in town are a young group without the Argent family history and they want to make their reputation fast by humiliating one of the old families. Rumor has it that the Stuarts and the Beaumonts have already weathered similar attempts. Chris Argent is on point when it comes to handling it because Beacon Hills is his town right now and Derek’s task is to keep his people alive and out of trouble. Allison is liaising between her father and the wolves.

(It’s not easy for Allison and no one is pretending it isn’t. She just lost her aunt, her mom, and her grandfather to this mess in short order and while each death was arguably their own damn fault that doesn’t mean she didn’t love them. Doesn’t _miss_ them. She’s working against an entire lifetime of programming even though it would be fucking _great_ if she could just flip a switch and suddenly be on the side of the supernaturals that’s just not going to happen. Even so, Allison is very quiet these days. She’s consumed by her thoughts and sometimes Stiles fancies he can see them swirling around behind her eyes like dark water. He wonders what it is she’s about to become.)

In a perfect world they’d be able to recruit someone new, someone neither the Argents nor their obnoxious younger cousins could recognize …but that would involve exposing someone else to the unrelenting hell that life in a high-profile werepack and be. Stiles is going to fight that if someone else things to bring it up. He doesn’t need any more hostages to fate, thanks.

Stiles puts his pen down as something occurs to him.

“You got something?” Scott asks, picking up on the sudden change in Stiles’ heart rate.

“Maybe.” He says and hides his crossed fingers in his lap. Scott does not _actually_ need to know about that particular application of magic. “Maybe not. I’ll get back to you on that.”

He muffles a grin. Maybe his little experiment is going to pay off after all.

 

* * *

 

Unfortunately Stiles doesn’t have a lot of what you’d call ‘girl clothes’. His normal clothes look even more slobtastic on a female frame than they do on his normal body, which is saying something. All his mom’s clothing is about five years out of date and in storage …plus he’s not sure he could bear to put on any of her old dresses anyway. His girl-self is more emotional somehow and he doesn’t want to find himself on the business end of a crying jag. That said, he feels like he doesn't run the same risks of experiencing a panic attack. It's nothing he can back up with numbers, but he thinks maybe there is something about his girl brain chemistry that just processes strong feelings more efficiently. 

Surveillance works best when you dress like a stereotype, Stiles has found, but ‘homeless teenage girl’ isn’t really a look he wants to perpetuate. So he sucks it up, changes his face to her face, and drives out to Target.

For the record? Shopping is hard and there are no convenient gay men lurking in the women’s section eagerly awaiting their chance to make over fashion challenged teenage girls. Rather, Stiles gets followed around by a security guard who is really not as subtle as he thinks he is and probably thinks Stiles is here to shop lift.

She doesn’t have much in the way of female role models, but ends up trying to channel Lydia on a budget. High heels turn out to be too much, but ballet flats are apparently ‘in’ right now. The end result is kind of tacky, but she thinks she looks believable enough to pass inspection. Besides, her plan is to keep her head down, text furiously, and look annoyed.

Free of Target, Stiles takes her new persona on a test run. She knows from their first stab at reconnaissance that the Hunters have a base in the warehouse district a few blocks away from where Derek used to hole up before the city decided to spring for a real security presence in the vacant areas by the train tracks.

The only problem is that she can’t take her Jeep. It’s gotten a little too recognizable even to strangers, what with the …uh… claw marks and bullet holes and stuff. So she parks a little ways off and takes the bus over. There’s a transfer point nearby the enemy camp. It should be easy enough to sit there for a little while and watch the Hunters move around in their oh-so-subtle black SUVs.

Obviously this isn’t a permanent solution, but Stiles has a vague idea that involves the clever use of some cheap-ass web cams and the shiny new municipal wifi network and she needs to get an idea of where it’ll be best to place the cameras.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Qwenhwyfar Stilinski -called Stiles- rolls into town in late August with a Jeep, four boxes of books, three duffle bags, her two sons, her mother’s lamps, and a big pair of movie star glasses. She stops to get gas on the edge of town. The older woman running the till smiles gently when Stiles pays and is on the phone as soon she pulls away from the station.
> 
> Beacon Hills is a medium-sized town, but when the sheriff’s daughter comes back home unannounced with both her kids and a black eye the grapevine can match or beat that of any small town beauty shop. Her dad is loading a gun when Stiles lets herself into the house.
> 
> She can’t help but feel like this is some kind of terrible omen for how the rest of her week is going to be.
> 
> She is correct.

Qwenhwyfar Stilinski -called Stiles- rolls into town in late August with a Jeep, four boxes of books, three duffle bags, her two sons, her mother’s lamps, and a big pair of movie star glasses. She stops to get gas on the edge of town. The older woman running the till smiles gently when Stiles pays and is on the phone as soon she pulls away from the station.

Beacon Hills is a medium-sized town, but when the sheriff’s daughter comes back home unannounced with both her kids and a black eye the grapevine can match or beat that of any small town beauty shop. Her dad is loading a gun when Stiles lets herself into the house.

She can’t help but feel like this is some kind of terrible omen for what the rest of her week is going to be like.

She is correct.

 

* * *

 

They can’t stay with her dad for more than a day or so. There’s only two bedrooms, one of which was hers when she was a girl and still has the same runty single bed which can no longer fit both her kids at the same time, and Stiles would prefer being closer to the middle and elementary schools for Genim and Gwynfor.

She finds a three bedroom rental on the outside of town and has been there for about half a week when Scott finally shows up on the front step with a hangdog expression like he hasn’t spent the past three days on the phone trying to find Stiles’ deadbeat ex. The bruise has faded a little, but not by much. It’s at the ‘rainbow’ stage, which means her face is a lovely patchwork quilt of peach, yellow, green, blue, and violet.

“If you tell Derek I’m in town before this goes down, I will make your life a pure and unadulterated living hell.” She says it flat out before he can say anything.

“You think he doesn’t already know? He bought the repair shop when the bank put it up for auction and hired Erica to run the office. It’s like he lives on the pulse of the town’s gossip network.” Scott says and looks over her shoulder to where her sons are peering around her hips. “Hey, guys!” He hunkers down with his arms out for a hug. His face falls when they don’t immediately pile into the arms of their favorite uncle and he looks up at Stiles.

“You’d better come inside.” She tells him.

He leaves a few hours later, but not before saying “I’ll keep it quiet as long as I can, but… you can’t hide this forever.”

“I’m not gonna.” She tests the puffy skin along her cheekbone. “I’m just not going to face the local Alpha, _my_ _ex_ , with a bruised face and expect him to behave in a sane or rational manner. He’s already crazy when it comes to Jason. You think there isn’t a _reason_ why I never bring the kids to dad for Christmas?”

“Well, I _knew_ , but…” Scott pauses. “You shouldn’t be alone right now. Any of you, but especially _you_.”

“I’ll be fine, Scott. This isn’t my first time at the rodeo.” Stiles kisses him on the cheek. “Try not to let it slip to Allison until after dinner, all right? She’s always more forgiving on a full stomach.”

“I said I’d keep it quiet and I will.” Scott turns a dull shade of red. “I can totally keep secrets from Allison!”

“Sure you can, baby.” Stiles assures him as she sends him off to his car.

 

* * *

 

He phone rings three hours later. The caller ID reads ‘Katniss’. Stiles checks the clock and it’s not _inconceivable_ that the McCall household had an early meal, but unlikely.

“You need to call Derek.”

“Hello to you too, Allison. Long time no chat! How _are_ you?” Genim looks up from where he and Gwynfor are wrestling on the carpet and his eyes catch the light coming in from the dinky kitchen where Stiles was washing dishes before the phone rang. She gives him a reassuring smile and he settles somewhat, but he’s still listening to her call. “I will call Derek when I’m damn good and ready and not a second before that.”

“Stiles, this isn’t…”

“… up for negotiation?” Stiles finishes Allison’s sentence for her. “You’re right. It _isn’t_. I’m going to text you a photo of what I look like right now and then you can tell me whether it’s a good idea to go anywhere near Derek.”

“Stiles!” Allison can be as bad or worse than her husband at times. It’s really seriously creepy how similar they are at times. “What if…?”

“You’re looking at this from the wrong side of the gulf, Allison. They’re my kids and they answer to _me_ not the other way around. I don’t answer to you either.” There’s a soft growl from the doorway and Stiles turns to see Genim staring at her with that creepy unwavering stare that Scott used to get so much in those early days before he got a grip on himself. She holds out her arm and lets him bury his face in her hip. Both the kids are moving without the slightest whisper of sound now, but Gwyn isn’t any faster than he used to be. He’s about five steps behind Genim and dragging his stuffed tiger behind him.

“Gwyn, don’t _lick_ Mom.” Genim scruffs his younger brother when he drags his tongue across Stiles’ thigh. “It’s _gross_.” The thing is he says it like it’s something he read once in a book and doesn’t quite believe anymore.

“… but she smells unhappy.” Gwyn whines. “Bite the phone and make it stop.”

“Don’t even think about it, young man.” Stiles tells Genim, who looks like he’s considering it. “The phone is blameless and expensive. Sorry, Allison, you were saying?”

“… Gwyn’s gotten good at talking, hasn’t he?” Allison sounds subdued, which is probably fair. It was only a few weeks ago that Gwyn was still grabbing the handset from his mom during her weekly chats with Allison so he could babble and blow raspberries into the receiver. Now he’s using full-on sentences that people outside his family can understand.

“Yeah.” Stiles rubs at her temples, which just makes the kids press closer into her legs as they react to her stress. “I think it’s a… you know. A thing. I’ll know more when I can talk to Derek properly without risking him flying off the handle.”

“Is it really that bad?”

“Yeah.” Stiles buries her fingers into Genim’s silky brown hair. “It kind of is. I probably still smell like the rogue who did it.”

“So it wasn’t Jason?” Allison presses. “Stiles, look, I won’t nag you about Derek just …tell me your husband wasn’t hitting you and we all missed it.”

“No, Jason never raised a hand to me.” Stiles says and it’s not a lie. What he ended up doing was arguably worse, but she’s not about to trash talk Genim and Gwyn’s dad right in front of them. They had to put up with enough during the divorce, however amicable it was, and they don’t need those bad feelings on top of everything else. “This was something else.”

“Is it dead?”

“Maybe.” Stiles closes her eyes against the memory of careening down a rain-slicked highway in the middle of the night with Genim’s whimpers ringing in her ears through her headset, Gwyn wailing in the background, and something scratching long terrible claws against glass… “Probably.”

“Well, all right then.” Allison’s dredged up a happy tone from somewhere and Stiles could kiss her if Scott wouldn’t go green with envy. “We should do something to celebrate you coming home at last. Scott says you don’t have a lot of furniture yet. I bet dad has some stuff he’d like to get rid of.”

“Yeah, that sounds good.” The Argents go through furniture like nobody’s business between their hired guns and rough lifestyle. Chris Argent’s kind of anal when it comes to appearances so he swaps stuff out every other year or so when the wear starts to show. Stiles privately thinks it’s one of the ways he copes with the death of his wife. “It’s a date. Dad will watch the boys. It’s okay, he smells like family.” She rushes on to quell the protests before they can start.

“If you’re sure…”

“I am.”

“All right then.”

 

* * *

 

Bedtime is a whole new kettle of fish these days. On the bright side, neither of the boys fight her on bath time anymore being as they’re now more sensitive to their own body odors, but Genim only just got used to sleeping in the dark before so now he has trouble dropping off because there’s no dark that’s dark enough.

“There’s light coming in from the streetlight outside.” He whines, which is abnormal considering he’s going on ten and all too aware of his own gravitas, but maybe that’s been outweighed by eight days on the road and adjusting to a new place. His voice is muffled by the side of Stiles’ breast where he’s got his face mashed into her armpit. Are all cubs this clingy? Stiles has no idea, but thinks whatever it is has been made worse by recent events.

“Put up with it for now.” She tells him because bargaining was a bad idea long before she had to worry about establishing a pack hierarchy with her children. “I’ll get you some blackout curtains tomorrow with Auntie Allison.”

“Okay.” It’s not the world’s most gracious capitulation, but he’s been holding up like a little trooper otherwise. Stiles thinks maybe he’s allowed to be a little whiney in the dead of night when he’s tucked up in bed with his mom. Gwyn is out like parachute pants, but he’s been skimping on naps so maybe it’s to be expected too. “Is Uncle Scott coming back?”

“Probably not until we’re all settled in.”

“… good. I wanted to bite him earlier.” Genim admits it in the world’s tiniest voice. “I knew I wasn’t supposed to so I didn’t do it.”

“That was good because you aren’t allowed to bite anybody at all.” Stiles gives him a hug and tilts his chin up so he has to look her in the eyes. “Even if they deserve it, even if you’re scared, you have to find me or one of your aunts and uncles. They’ll protect you.”

Genim doesn’t look terribly convinced, but he doesn’t fight her on it and he’s too young for questions like ‘where were they when I needed them before?’ Small blessing that.

Stiles stays until he’s dropped off and manages to wiggle out of bed without either of the boys waking up. Gwyn rolls right into the warm spot she left behind and Genim throws an arm across his chest.

_Cuuuute_.

There’s a television downstairs, but it’s still in the box and Stiles isn’t sure she could watch it without waking her little terrors up anyway. All her books are still packed because she hasn’t successfully managed to construct any of the bookshelves and she didn’t get a chance to bring any of the light reading anyway. Everything in those boxes relates to her work, which… well it’s not like she’s got anything better to do so Stiles curls up on the floor with her laptop and starts answering emails.

She’s halfway through responding to an email from the east coast Alpha Council about a problem that sounds suspiciously like Red Caps when Genim is suddenly at her feet with his brother at his side and their eyes are glowing like tiny Bunsen burners.

“Mom there’s something outside!” Genim hisses.

“What’s it smell like, baby?” There’s not much chance that there’s something unfriendly outside, not this close to the heart of Hale territory, but Derek’s expanded the pack since Stiles left town. It may not be anyone out there that she knows.

“I don’t know…” Genim sniffs helplessly. “Kind of like Uncle Scott, but… kind of not?”

The doorbell rings.

“Take your brother behind the couch.” Genim balks, but goes when Stiles stares him down. She dusts herself off and wishes she had something better on than a pair of super-short cut-offs and a camisole.

There’s no good way to answer the door when you aren’t sure that there’s someone on the other side with a shotgun except to nut-up and go look out the peephole. Stiles gets up on tip-toes to look… and immediately wishes she hadn’t.

“Go upstairs, baby, and take your brother with you. I’ll be fine. It’s not a predator.” She points because it’s not like Derek can’t hear her through the door. “Back to bed.”

There’s some whining and foot dragging, but Stiles isn’t in the mood. She’s got to save all her patience for the creeperwolf waiting outside. It figures he’d show up as soon as it was dark and she was braless.

“Seriously?” She asks as soon as it’s safe to open the door. “Seriously, you could have called or –I don’t know- _waited for the sun to rise_?”

“I was doing my rounds.” Derek says by way of an explanation and steps inside like she invited him in or something. He’s doing a good job of not wolfing out, but there’s a ruby glitter to his eyes that just won’t go away. His hand comes up halfway towards touching her face, but stops and hovers about an inch away from her cheek cupping the air around her jaw. “Who bit them?” His voice is soft and reminds her of a time when she still thought that _he’d_ be the one helping to raise any kids she might have. More innocent days, those. “Who hit you?”

“It’s a long story.” Stiles sighs and resists the urge to turn into his touch. How long has it been since someone stood close to her like this? Too long, she thinks, but she knows better than to turn to Derek because he’s handy and willing. Look how that turned out the first time?

“I’ve got time.”

Stiles starts coffee because she channels the 1950s when she’s nervous and Derek keeps staring at her sparse half-assembled Ikea furniture like it kicked his dog and owes him money. Then again, he wears that look a lot if Stiles’ memories from high school are to be believed, so maybe it’s nothing.

He glares at her half-assembled bookshelf as it lists to one side and collapses under the sheer weight of his disdain.

… okay, so maybe it’s something.

Stiles shamelessly takes a spot on the futon, intending for Derek to get stuck on the poäng chair, but it backfires when he just sits next to her. He sits sideways with one arm on the backrest and his knee hitched up on the seat so it brushes against her thigh.

It occurs to Stiles far too late that she lost her virginity to this guy on a futon much like this one …and judging from the look in Derek’s eye he’s remembering it too.

“So, uh…” Stiles wishes the coffee would brew faster. A mug to hide behind sounds really nice right now.

“Who bit the boys?” Derek always calls them that; the boys. Stiles isn’t convinced he’s ever accepted the fact that Jason had anything to do with her pregnancies at all. It probably doesn’t help that her sons don’t favor their father in the slightest. They both have their grandpa’s fine hair, their grandmother’s nose, and their mother’s eyes. Genim has Stiles’ mouth, but Gwynfor looks exactly like his grandpa.

“Like I said, it’s a long story.” She sighs and glances towards the stairs. Hopefully Genim isn’t hiding at the top landing, listening in. Little pitchers. Big ears.

“They’re both in bed and falling asleep.” Derek says and Stiles could curse his stupid wolfy ears except for the fact that they’re so useful. “Keep talking.”

Stiles sifts through the story in her head; picking out the pieces that are safe enough to tell, the parts that aren’t really safe to share but she’s going to have to reveal anyway, the stuff there’s just no point to mentioning, and the things she’s not telling anyone _ever_.

“I’m not sure about all the details.” She can guess, but conjecture is lazy scholarship. “It was Jason’s weekend to spend with the boys and he picked them up as usual, I got a call from Genim on Saturday night…” She can feel Derek tense as her heart rate picks up speed. “… I always send them off with a phone for emergencies. They were trapped in the backseat of their dad’s car and there was a rogue alpha outside. Genim found the mountain ash Jason kept in the glove box and used it to seal up the back seat, but it wasn’t holding.”

She tries not to close her eyes because if she does she knows the memory will be painted on the back of her eyelids. The rogue was nine-tenths feral and moon mad on top of that, but he’d still figured out that he could rattle the car and dislodge the barrier by throwing boulders at it.

“I used the GPS chip in the phone to track them, but by the time I got there …it had already gotten the boys out of the car.” There’s a scene that will inhabit every nightmare she has for the rest of her life; her sons huddled together in the hollow of a rotten tree while a red-eyed nightmare who made Peter Hale’s darkest days look like fucking _amateur hour_ prowled around them waiting to see if the boys either changed or died.

They were neat surgically precise little bites, one per boy. Gwynfor’s reached nearly from his armpit to the crest of his hip and he’d cried for _hours_ until the skin started to grow over the gaping puncture wounds in his skin.

She ducks Derek’s arm when he goes to pull her close without thinking about it. It’s pure instinct because she absolutely does not want to be hugged, held, touched, or even to be _breathed_ near until she’s got this offer her chest.

“You killed it.”

Derek’s leaning forward in his seat as though he stopped himself halfway through standing up to follow her –and who knows? Maybe he was.

“You sound very certain of yourself.” Stiles observes.

“I know you.” Derek shrugs one shoulder. “Getting between you and your cubs is one of the quicker ways I can think of to die.”

A dry cough of a laugh works its way out of Stiles’ chest, taking her by surprise. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” She runs the tip of her tongue over her lower lip and tries not to bite it. “… but you’re wrong.”

Derek sits up as she lifts the hem of her camisole to show him to reveal the gauze bandage on her side.

His reaction isn’t what Stiles had braced herself for. Most everyone who’s seen her bite has panicked, convinced that she’s going to die. Scott was angry, Allison was worried, and every Alpha whose territory she passed through on the way home offered her hospice care and a home for her children when she passed.

Derek just frowns and lifts one edge of the bandage to peer at the crusty bite underneath.

It’s an ugly thing; nowhere near the neat shallow bites afforded to her kids. It’s torn along one side and doubled up near the bottom where the rogue’s jaw slipped when she rammed a taser in between his eyes.

“You fought.” He observes (not without a little smugness) and runs his thumb along the edge of the nastiest bit on top. A bit of scab crumbles under the touch and he rubs at it. It smarts a little, but not like it did those first few days when the entire region ran hot and itchy.

“Of course I did.” Stiles pushes her shirt down or tries to. Derek keeps stroking at her scabs steadily like he’s looking for a reaction. “Stop that. I don’t let Genim pick his scabs so you don’t get to pick mine.”

Derek glances up at her with an assholish smirk tugging at his mouth. “You won’t scar.” He says and looks back down at her side. “And if you were going to die then you would have done it by now.” He presses down harder on a large patch of scab until it just flakes off entirely… leaving pale and unblemished skin behind.

It’s been a long time since high school, since she was shooting up inches overnight and her limbs were constantly different lengths, but Stiles flails off the side of the couch anyway and lands on her belly with a mouth full of carpet fuzz. She rolls over and rucks her shirt back up, scrubbing at the bite. It’s not fully healed yet, but the flesh underneath has knit together.

She glares up at Derek. “You _knew_.” She hisses at him.

Derek’s sitting forward with his elbows on his knees. “Yeah.” He says and reaches out to touch her cheek, running his fingertips along the curve of her cheekbone. “Your eyes were glowing when you opened the door.” He pulls back. “They still are.”

 

* * *

 

They move things to the kitchen where Stiles pours Derek half a cup of coffee then drowns it in cream and honey until it’s barely coffee at all. He accepts his mug with a soft expression she really doesn’t want to interpret and sips the drink slowly, savoring it. You’d think he hadn’t had a decent cup since the last time she made him one, which is bullshit because she knows he knows how to work the machine.

“What else aren’t you telling me?” He asks her as he traces the edge of his cup with one finger.

Stiles busies her hands with putting together her own coffee (two sugars, almond milk, and a little bit of nutmeg) but it only buys her so much time. There was a time when she was able to keep things from Derek, to hide the truth without lying outright, but neither of them are the cocksure youngsters they used to be. Derek learned her ways a long time ago just as she learned his.

“Jason got involved with the Beaumonts after we split up.” She says at last, hiding her grimace with the lip of her mug.

There’s not a lot of point in hiding it and Derek would probably find out anyway through Allison, who will be hearing it through the hunter grapevine any day now surely. The Beaumonts are (or rather _were_ ) one of the other major hunter families after the Maccons, the Argents, and the Renaults. They never had quite the political pull of the Renaults or the same supply chains enjoyed by the Argents, but they were one of the workhorse families responsible for policing large parts of the Northeast.

“The Alpha pack hit the Beaumonts hard about a month back. Rumor has it that it was in retaliation for what happened to the Birdwell Island pack, but who knows with those whack-jobs?” She takes a breath. Birdwell Island was the Hale House Fire all over again, but with a higher body count and a lot of collateral damage. She was brought in as a consultant and got to pick through what little evidence was left after law enforcement got through ruining the crime scene. It wasn’t pretty and Deucalion showed up halfway through to breathe down her neck. It hadn’t been pleasant and was far too reminiscent of the first time she met Deucalion’s pack of pet fanatics. “The important thing is that Jason got bitten and went omega.”

“No one took him in?” One of Derek’s oh-so-expressive eyebrows crawls up towards his hairline, which he still wears in that ridiculous reverse ducktail except for the part where it’s gotten a bit shaggy and is flopping over his ears. Stiles sits on the urge to attack him with a pair of clippers.

That was a thing they used to do. Stiles has never been a great hairdresser, but she cut her dad’s hair all through middle and high school. Eventually she just started doing Derek’s too. It was an opportunity for them to catch a little time together even in the hectic day-to-day struggle of being a new wolfpack. Every few weeks she’d sit Derek down in the kitchen, throw a towel over his shoulders, and take her time trimming his thick black hair into shape.

It’s been over a decade since they were together, but it’s funny; Stiles can still remember the heavy silken weight of his hair between her fingers, how he leaned back into her touch, the way the curve of his skull fit into the palm of her hand when they kissed...

(Jason never let her cut his hair. He liked having going to an old school barber for the whole shave and haircut ritual. Maybe that should have been a sign, but it wasn’t a really a dealbreaker. She had more pressing concerns at the time.)

“Not after he gave the Beaumonts intel on nearly every pack on the Eastern seaboard as entry fee they didn’t.” Stiles doesn’t bother to hide her sick shame at that. After all, he’d stolen most of it from her private server. “Besides, I don’t think he actually tried. He started researching cures, but only found one that had a chance of working. You can guess which one.”

Derek pinches his the bridge of his nose. “How do your sons figure into this?”

“I don’t think Jason’s Alpha intended to change him.” Stiles takes a sip of her drink and leans back against the edge of her ancient linoleum counter. To be real honest, seeing Derek in her kitchen is making her feel fidgety. It had looked all right when she first rented the place, back when her only priorities had been a sound roof, the correct ratio of bathrooms to bedrooms, no lingering odors from the previous tenants to bother the boys, and immediate vacancy. Now she’s noticing the bleached out pattern on the plastic floor and the chips along the edge of the countertops.

This place doesn’t look anything like a home, nowhere she’d want to raise her children.

“Near as I can tell there was no contact between them, although not for lack of trying of Jason’s part. He was actively hunting it to get himself cured. The only problem is that he never realized he was being hunted right back.” Stiles touches her side. “I don’t know what happened to Jason. He wasn’t anywhere in sight when I caught up to the boys. It was just them and the Alpha. It had torn the car open to get at them and had them penned up inside a rotten tree. They both had bites already. It was just –watching them, waiting.” That was the eeriest part, seeing that massive thing sprawled out like a patient dog at a crosswalk surrounded by all the evidence of its terrible, terrible rage.

It hadn’t moved to attack her when she pulled her SUV into the clearing. Rather, it had watched her with a calculating gaze and waited to see what she would do –all while her children sobbed behind it.

“I rammed it with my car.” Stiles continues. There’s a reason she drove the Jeep home when it had been all but retired in a comfortable garage where he dad could play with it during the holidays. The SUV survived to get them home, but only just barely. She had to call in some favors to get it towed away and pulled apart for scrap. “We fought. I had a gun, wolf mace, and my taser. I had a crazy plan to hold out until the cavalry could arrive, but it was too much for me. Not when I couldn’t use the gun for fear of hitting Genim or Gwynfor.”

“It chose to bite you rather than kill you?” Derek’s frowning again, but it’s a thoughtful frown. “Adults don’t transition easily and are harder to control then cubs. Your presence would make it harder to control your sons. Wolf cubs obey a parent within the pack over their Alpha until puberty”.

“I think it intended to kill me at first, but it must have changed its mind.” Stiles scowls. “It had a few chances to snap my neck and didn’t take any of them. It may have ended up having to kill me anyway, but that’s when Ninette and her two seconds caught up with me.”

“Ninette is the Alpha who was hosting you?” Derek asks and nods when she confirms it. The complex barter system of respect paid and favors owed between packs never ceases to amaze Stiles. She suspects Ninette just received a notation in Derek’s internal ledger. How big of a check remains to be seen.

“They wounded the rogue, but it escaped. Ninette wanted me to stay, but I needed to evacuate my sons from the region. I couldn’t take the risk that it would howl them right out from underneath our noses during the school day.” Stiles doesn’t add the part where she spent every day until the second she crossed the Beacon Hills outer limits looking over her shoulder convinced that the day when the monster ran her to ground and took her babies.


	13. The World's Oldest Profession (Sort of...)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the record, Stiles would like it to be known that he did not set out to become some sort of elite werewolf-specific prostitute.
> 
> To be real honest, he didn’t set out to become any kind of prostitute at all. It’s just, there was this club and he was in the middle of some self-exploration during freshman year. High school was not awesome for him and he’s never had a chance to figure out all his likes, dislikes, limits, and etc. He was a little buzzed and feeling brave, which is his explanation for following a complete stranger into the men’s room and giving him a BJ there. In his defense there was more than a little making-out and he got off too so it isn’t until the guy tucks himself back into his trousers, brushes a kiss against Stiles’ temple, and tucks two hundred dollar bills into Stiles’ back pocket that he realizes that this was a business exchange.

For the record, Stiles would like it to be known that he did not set out to become some sort of elite werewolf-specific prostitute.

To be real honest, he didn’t set out to become any kind of prostitute at all. It’s just, there was this club and he was in the middle of some self-exploration during freshman year. High school was not awesome for him and he’s never had a chance to figure out all his likes, dislikes, limits, and etc. He was a little buzzed and feeling brave, which is his explanation for following a complete stranger into the men’s room and giving him a BJ there. In his defense there was more than a little making-out and he got off too so it isn’t until the guy tucks himself back into his trousers, brushes a kiss against Stiles’ temple, and tucks two hundred dollar bills into Stiles’ back pocket that he realizes that this was a business exchange.

It isn’t the first time in his life that Stiles is struck dumb and it won’t be the last, but he stands there trying to pick his jaw up off the tile floor long enough that the guy …his first john… vanishes into the crowd before he can give the money back and explain there’s been a mistake. In retrospect, given this new context their conversation prior to retiring to the men’s room makes a lot more sense.

This is the first time and for a while he thinks it will be the last.

Getting mistaken for a hooker kind of puts a damper on his party spirit, which is probably all for the best. In retrospect, Stiles thinks he was probably coming off as a little desperate and lonely; two things that are unfortunately true.

He spends more time on campus after that and studies harder. His grades pick up a bit, which makes his dad happy and nets him a little scholarship money. The cash lives in his sock drawer because some contrary part of him stubbornly believes that the money won’t be real unless he spends it and if it isn’t real then he doesn’t have to seriously think about what he did.

That works for about a year and a half. Stiles thinks that must be some kind of record because seriously, he’s never had that kind of luck with avoidance before. Then his dad gets sick.

It starts the way heart trouble usually does. His dad complains about shoulder pain and Stiles (with the complicity of Mrs. McCall) nags him until he drops by the hospital. Four hours later, Stiles gets a call that his dad has been admitted.

Things change after that. His dad’s duties change because they have to. Sheriff Stilinski has always been more hands-on than most people in his position, but now he’s working what is basically a desk job which impacts his income. Then there are the medical bills. Law enforcement generally offers good medical care, but it varies around the state and Beacon county is not large so their health insurance only covers so much.

“We’ll be okay, kiddo.” His dad promises him. “You’ve only got three more semesters to go. Nothing needs to change.”

That’s a lie and Stiles knows it because he is a self-professed nosey little shit. He knows exactly what kind of bills his dad has to pay and he knows what tuition costs. Plus there’s the money his dad sends him every month for food and gas. That doesn’t leave a lot left over and if there’s another emergency then his dad will have no buffer.

“I’ll pick up a work-study gig.” He lies pleasantly over the phone, like the deadline for that didn’t pass months ago, like he can afford to take time away from his studies and still maintain his scholarship-worthy GPA.

It says something that his dad takes the offer with little to no questions, but Stiles can handle it. He’ll just eat a lot of ramen and walk more. No big deal.

 _Big deal_ , as it turns out, because people aren’t meant to live on carbohydrates and sodium alone without it taking a toll …but Stiles could have put up with that by begging pity meals off of friends and sneaking into the faculty buffets with tupperware like the grad students do. He’s wily and picks up urban foraging fast.

His dad has the second heart attack a few months after the first and this one ends with him on indefinite medical leave with words like ‘early retirement’ floating around in the air. It’s not the greatest Christmas ever and spring semester starts with Stiles taking on a boatload of student loans to make up for what his dad can’t help with anymore and that only covers tuition. To say the cash hiding in his sock drawer hasn’t been on his mind would be a heinous, heinous lie.

Stiles finally breaks and spends it on some great big flat packs of tuna, rice, canned beans, and ramen that are pretty much what get him through until mid-term, by which time he’s hoping to have come up with a new plan.

A new plan does not present itself.

“I’ll do it one more time.” Stiles tells himself as he tries to find a suitably nice shirt (or at least one that looks sloppy on purpose) in amongst his stuff. “Just one more time.” And _yes_ , he’s aware that that’s the lie every hooker tells themselves before they go out for the evening but it’s either this or a promising career in selling his plasma and the machines they use for that freak Stiles right the fuck out.

He goes to the same bar and at least this time he can use his real ID to get in. Small mercies. He tries to remember what it was he did that first time and dances a little, hangs out by the sofas, doesn’t drink a lot although he could if he wanted to. Stiles isn’t, like, breathtakingly hot and he knows it. He doesn’t much care either, but he he’s pretty sure he occupies the ideal intersection between ‘attractive’ and ‘attainable’. At the very least he hasn’t had to buy any of his own drinks all evening. He doesn’t get any business either, but he has an okay time; enough so that he doesn’t mind going back the next night.

It’s a full moon so he gets in free. Not a lot of people hang out in the bar district when the supernatural community is feeling frisky, but Stiles has the coveted LYC-V-R stamp on his driver’s license (and you’d better believe the bouncer puts it under an honest-to-god black light and then scans it for the microchip that proves it’s not a counterfeit.) He can go where he wants.

“I think this is the first authentic one of these that I’ve seen all year.” He comments as he hands it back. “We don’t get a lot of Immunes in this area.” Stiles isn’t an Immune. He’s Resistant, but the differences are perishingly small to anyone who doesn’t fall into either category so Stile lets it pass.

Maybe it’s his imagination, but Greenberg (the bouncer) seems a lot friendlier all of a sudden. He’s acting less like Stiles is something he just stepped in anyway.

“Uh, yeah, I can’t afford the fancy parties they throw downtown in the Velvet Quarter. Not really my scene.” Stiles admits as he pockets his wallet again. Not that he knows anything concrete about the Velvet Quarter, but he’s heard rumors that sound like the sort of stuff you only see on reality TV shows about people with too much money and free time. He can wear strategically torn t-shirts and skinny jeans in this part of town, but he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t even be allowed into the Velvet Quarter as a bus boy. “Plus, you know, vampires give me the willies. I can barely handle the Red Cross.”

“Yeah, fair enough.” Greenberg grunts. “At least werewolves keep it real. Well, get in and don’t be an idiot.”

“Okay.” Stiles promises like he knows how. To be fair, he knows the basic rules: watch your drink, stay within screaming distance, don’t follow anyone outside to their skeevy-ass van, and be _real_ polite to anyone with red eyes.

There’s less dancing tonight because most everyone in the club knows better than to get crushed in all together, but there’s some and Stiles enjoys himself in his spastic ‘I am totally flailing around like this on purpose’ sort of way. He doesn’t get any free drinks tonight mostly he suspects because it wouldn’t occur to a lycanthrope to send one over. They can’t get drunk so all liquor does is taste bad or end up in someone’s lap. Most everyone here is also a were-whatever too so there isn’t any point in trying get anyone _else_ tipsy either. So he dances and takes a break by the squishy sofas when he’s tired then dances some more.

It’s getting late. Stiles is pretty sure he’s not getting any business tonight either and is about to give the whole idea up as a bad job when someone joins him by the sofas. To his surprise it’s someone he knows.

It’s _that_ guy.

“I haven’t seen you in a while.” He’s still lean, still good looking in an older-guy-but-not-an- _old_ -guy kind of way with a bit of scruff and pale ashy brown hair. There’s something a little proprietary in the way he slides an arm across the sofa behind Stiles’ back and Stiles knows that if he wants business then he’s got it. “I thought you might have closed up shop.”

“It’s a part time gig.” Stiles says truthfully while attempting to look relaxed and sexy. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t manage it even slightly, but the guy smiles and looks charmed so apparently it worked despite his efforts.

“I should move fast then in case you go off-shift.” The man smiles and his eyes don’t exactly glow yellow. That’s distress/threat response. His pupils do however dilate open wide and he tilts his head so the light hits the reflective layer behind his retinas; the **_tapetum lucidum_**. He’s definitely a lycanthrope, which explains why he was so careful and obsessed with fluid contact last time. Technically only an Alpha should be able to change someone, but you never know who’s already pre-disposed towards lycanthropy. “Whaddya say?”

…what _can_ he say? Stiles says yes and they arrange to meet up at a nice enough hotel on the south side of town. Cadeus (and Stiles _seriously_ doubts that’s his real name) slips him a key card and is waiting in the room when Stiles lets himself in. Cadeus looks up with a smile that can’t be described as anything except ‘wolfish’ and straight up herds him towards the bed.

“Do you know what to do?” He pants it out between kisses pressed against Stiles’ stomach.

“I try not to assume.” Stiles is proud of himself. He’s not freaking out and his voice is pretty steady. He likes what Cadeus is doing well enough and thinks maybe this isn’t going to be so bad. “Tell me what you need.”

“Just… submit for me.” Cadeus pulls his shirt off before diving back in for more. “I need… I need to get it out of my system. Meditation just isn’t doing it this month.”

“Okay.” Stiles takes a breath and forces the tension out of his muscles, which sounds weird and feels weirder especially when he lets Cadeus position him however he likes. “How’s this?”

“Perfect.” The wolf is peeking out of Cadeus’ eyes now. Whatever he needs to get rid of is lurking just below his skin, looking for any outlet that presents itself and it occurs to Stiles a little too late that a fight would probably be every bit as effective as sex in that department. So he keeps his eyes down, his muscles lax, and just… takes it.

This is not really how he prefers his sexual encounters. He likes to be active and is kind of demanding to be real honest. Just laying back and thinking of England or whatever is so not his style… but this is isn’t about him and Stiles recognizes that, isn’t wild about it, but will admit that it’s easier to compartmentalize like this.

He wakes up the next morning alone and there’s two thousand dollars in cash sitting on the night stand along with a folded note.

It’s a phone number along with a ‘Next month?’

Well. _Repeat business_.

Stiles isn’t sure how he feels about that. Then he counts the money on the nightstand and has a minor heart attack of his own. It’s enough to get him through until break and then some.

Apparently some werewolves are willing to pay well for help through that special time of the month.

Part of him knows right then and there that this going to happen again. If nothing else he’s going to get desperate or hungry or the Jeep will break down or (god forbid) his dad will get sick again.

“Shit.” He groans and crawls back under the blankets, which still smell a little like sex and Cadeus’ expensive cologne. Later he takes a hot bath in the ginormous tub and comes out of it feeling a little less like he went five rounds with a randy moon-mad werewolf. He leaves the hotel key on the dresser for housekeeping to collect and takes one of the side stairwells downstairs.

It’s dumb. No one’s making him sneak out the back door, but at the same time he kind of doesn’t want to look at anyone just now anyway.

He takes the bus back to campus and by the time he sets foot back on the brick path in front of his dorm he’s resolved to never ever call the number Cadeus left him.

 

* * *

 

The county retires his dad right before Christmas. There’s a party and a gold watch. He has his pension, but his other retirement plans were nowhere close to fruition. He talks about picking up another job, something less stressful just until Stiles is done with college.

Stiles lies about picking up a better job and calls the number. Cadeus answers on the first ring. He sounds kind of ragged and on edge. The full moon is in three days.

“You’ve got great timing, Pup.” He sighs. “Are you free tonight? I can book us a suite wherever you like.”

“Same place as last time is fine by me.” Stiles has been carefully coaxing himself into a good mood all afternoon so his heart rate doesn’t spike. It’s not quite a lie. That was a really nice suite and he’s had reoccurring fantasies about the tub and all that hot water. “I’ll meet you there.”

 

* * *

 

Weirdly enough Cadeus sticks around the next morning. Not for long, but he stirs awake when Cadeus presses a kiss to his temple. Stiles blinks for a bit, taking in the man’s messy hair and generally improved color.

“You look better.” He says without thinking about it, but Cadeus just grins with extended teeth. The smile gets a little warmer and reaches his eyes when Stiles fails to flinch. He might have if he weren’t so completely wiped out, but really? Right now he cannot be bothered.

“I feel better.” Cadeus admits and pulls the heavy blanket up over Stiles’ shoulder in a weirdly tender gesture. “Get some rest, Pup.”

“Yeah…”Stiles’ eyes are already heavy, but some of the pain eases. He blinks sleepily at his client’s hand on his arm, covered in a lacy spider’s web of black veins. “Huh?”

“Just taking back some of what I gave you.” Cadeus murmurs. “Pay it no mind. I’m sorry, Pup. That was a pretty bad one.” The veins fade when he takes his hand away. “Go to sleep.”

There’s a bit extra with Stiles’ payment this time, but it doesn’t bother him. Stiles knows he earned it and buys himself Starbucks on the way home.

 

* * *

 

Cadeus gets to be a regular, which is totally weird, but more manageable when they figure out a schedule that keeps him from wolfing-out at bad moments. Apparently they’re going to be picking new partners soon at his law firm and as a werewolf Cadeus has to make himself look better than merely ‘good’ if he has a prayer of competing: _Hello, Stress City_.

Their encounters don’t get to be as bad as those first two; something Stiles is beyond grateful for. He learns to go limp and yielding, to minimize himself as a potential threat. The sex is still kind of boring, but boring is better than exciting with werewolves he’s learned.

He’s not shopping for new clients, but he ends up getting some anyway just through word of mouth. The first one is a referral from Cadeus; an omega he knows from college who travels a lot for work and can’t always make it back to safe and familiar territory for the full moon. That’s not a fun session, but Stiles learns a bit more about omegas and makes enough to put a new transmission into his poor neglected Jeep.

He doesn’t work much; just a couple of times a month plus special sessions once in a great while. The money piles up a little and rather than let it sit in his bank account looking sketchy, Stiles starts funneling it into his student loans. He’s too proud (or maybe too dumb) to spend much of it on himself, but he can’t quite stop either.

The scent of ‘wolf’ sinks into his skin and other werewolves start talking to him –not always on ‘business’ as it were, but just to talk. There’s a girl on campus by the name of Mahesvari with a deep golden complexion and sooty black eyelashes who bonds with him over being burdened by ridiculous names no one is ever able to pronounce. She’s his go-to for dumb werewolf questions.

“Not everyone uses sex to get through the bad times.” She tells him once during a cram session for the econ class they’re both suffering through. “It’s actually a pretty rare outlet. Most people want to fight. A good Alpha can ground you and keep you in line, but there aren’t many good Alphas anymore.” Svari pokes her notebook with a pencil with a disgruntled expression. She’s been an Omega since her parents left their pack back in the 90s. She shakes herself, clearing out whatever’s in her head right now. “Anyway, I think some people use exercise too. I know this one guy in my mom’s building who pretty much lives in the gym. Total rage issues there, no lie.”

Stiles thinks about the time he woke up to one of his clients doing one-handed push-ups on the floor next to the bed, apparently killing time until Stiles woke up so they could discuss an extension on their original deal.

Most of the werewolves he’s worked with are bizarrely courteous like that. Only one of them ever got deliberately rough with him. He’s lucky that someone heard the noise in the next room over and called security.

A smart person would have quit right then and there, but Stiles met Scott that week (still nursing a black eye and reeking of aggressive wolf). They have the same teacher for Environmental Systems, but Scott’s enrolled in the 8 am session and consistently oversleeps so the professor lets him attend the 12 o’clock class rather than dock him points for excessive absences. Scott’s the only son of a single mom who makes just enough money to disqualify him from the really juicy federal aid, but not enough to help him do more than pay tuition. He’s also a werewolf and –for a reasonable fee- more than willing to keep an ear out for Stiles when he’s working.

Scott is adorable; a real sweetheart who really and truly does not understand that he is basically a pimp. He remains convinced that Stiles is a therapist for werewolves and will not be persuaded otherwise.

“Scott, therapists don’t fuck their clients.” Stiles tries this line of reasoning on several occasions, although he’s not sure why. Scott’s answer is always the same.

“Well, hookers don’t sit up all night talking to them.” Scott doesn’t even look up from his phone at this point. He is always texting his lady friend, the incomparable Allison who is studying in another state, especially around the time of the month when Stiles needs him.

“I regret telling you about that every single day.” Stiles grumbles because that is not a regular occurrence –except for the part where it is now because the wolf in question still books sessions with him once in a while and neither of them have so much as taken off their shirts. “Lonely freshmen away from their home territory for the first time ever don’t count.”

“Yeah huh.” Scott laughs at him and grins doofily at his phone before launching into a story about whatever it is that his perfect girlfriend has done this time. This is pretty much how most of their exchanges go.

The semester is winding down to a close when everything predictably goes to shit because everything always goes to shit when Stiles has to study for a difficult final.

Let it be known that Stiles doesn’t actually cruise wolf bars for clients anymore. Rather he goes there for trivia night, to lose at foosball, and flail around on the dance floor when his song comes on. That said, he knows there are people (usually with artfully forged IDs with the LYC-V-R or LYC-V-I stamp on them) who do and those people don’t like him much. Hookers are super territorial, but at the same time know better than to start fights that’ll get everyone tossed out of the bar.

Stiles usually hangs out at Halestorm because they’re pretty good at spotting fakes, which means he spends less time in an evening being glared at or tripped on his way to the toilet. It’s a borderline risk because Halestorm is own by the Hales, who are kind of big shit in the wolf community. Most werewolves are more beer and pretzel types, but the Hale wolves tend to be high-powered politicians, business people, and lawyers. Cadeus is affiliated with the Hales for example and so are the rest of his regulars probably considering that they can afford his services. He doesn’t know what it says about the Hale Alpha that they need someone like Stiles and he isn’t particularly keen to find out, thanks.

That night Stiles is not dancing or playing at the game tables in back. His roommate locked the door _and_ put the privacy lock on so Stiles is hanging out on the great big smooshy sofas set away from the dance floor, nursing something non-alcoholic he got as a freebie from the bartender, and almost halfway asleep. The music is loud for a lycanthrope crowd, which means it’s pleasantly low to human ears.

He’s just thinking about getting up and going back to campus to see if the room is clear or if Scott’s couch is clear for the night when someone grabs him by the back of the collar and hauls him to his feet. His drink goes spilling down his front, but it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference as he’s frog marched to the VIP section and dumped at the feet of what appears to be a modern day James Dean.

Well James Dean had better hair, but the guy seated on the U-shaped couch surrounded by leather clad teenagers has got one on him in terms of physique. Few wolves put much time or effort into body building. There isn’t much point unless you’re a pack enforcer and they tend to go more for core strength. This guy has literally sculpted his arms and torso into what approaches a work of art –then dressed that masterpiece in a dingy white tank top flecked with dark brown spots of what might well be blood.

 _Classy_.

Stiles picks himself up, which is a mistake because James Dean’s goon takes it as an opportunity to frisk him. He ignores Stiles’ phone and keys in favor of his wallet which gets tossed to his boss. The man slides out the ID, examines it with a critical eye, and then calmly snaps it in half.

“If I see you in here again you might live to regret it.” His eyes flare red and he nods to his beta, who folds Stiles’ arm up behind his back and kindly escorts him off the premises and onto the sidewalk outside.

He sits there feeling stunned and a little sick to his stomach for about five minutes or so until his brain reboots and his nasty vindictive side rears its ugly head.

Greenberg is bouncing tonight and drops his gaze as Stiles approaches. “Pretty sure I’m not supposed to let you back in, man.” He says almost apologetically.

“No prob, I don’t want back in.” Stiles assures him. “Mind telling me who it was who had me thrown out?”

Greenberg wets his lips and leans forward. “You didn’t hear this from me, but…” He looks around real quick before continuing. “Peter Hale got challenged a couple hours ago. Word is his nephew took Alpha from him.”

“No _shit_.” Stiles whistles appreciatively. Things make a bit more sense now if Dean’s the new head of Hale Pack. Peter is –or rather _was_ infamous for letting certain thing slide if he got an appropriate cut or was sufficiently amused by them; hookers in his bars for example. “He got a name?”

“Derek.” Greenberg retreats back into the doorway as someone shouts for him inside. “Good luck, Stilinski. I’ll let the others know you won’t be around anymore.”

“Thanks.” Stiles says. “…also, sorry in advance.”

“Huh?” Greenberg asks, flummoxed, but Stiles doesn’t bother to explain. He’s too busy dialing the cops.

 

* * *

 

Stiles isn’t there when a pair of officers arrest the brand new Alpha of the Hale Pack for the unlawful destruction of a federally issued identity badge, but he _does_ see him at the county courthouse where a judge orders Derek to pay Stiles the $400 chip fee it cost to get the damn thing replaced plus some hefty damages which will pretty much pay for Stiles’ last semester at school.

Derek doesn’t make a scene nor does he try to defend himself by outing Stiles as a prostitute. For one thing, were-specific prostitution is actually legal (and wasn’t that funny to find out? Filling out the application for his license and paying the fine for working without a permit: not so much. On the bright side, he had a lawyer vested in keeping him on the right side of the law.)

He just stands there in stony silence, answers questions when directly asked, and then writes a check for the full amount at the clerk’s office. His mooks glare at Stiles the entire time except for the blonde busty one and a whippet thin little brunette who favors Derek. The brunette doesn’t pay him any attention at all and the blonde smiles at him like she wants to blow his house down in sexy terrifying ways.

He doesn’t see them again after, which is a letdown. Stiles has never met a werewolf capable of learning from a single mistake, but maybe there’s a first time for everything. He does however get a call from his dad who is still blissfully unaware that his son fucks werewolves for money in addition to being alternately proud of him for dealing with the problem legally and upset with him for going to a wolf bar in the first place.

Derek, however, has the last laugh because all of Stiles’ clients stop calling after the lawsuit: full stop.

It doesn’t come as a surprise and Stiles is –he’s actually a little grateful to have the choice taken out of his hands like this. He’s been thinking about graduation and finding work. Being a Grown Up™ is terrifying and he doesn’t exactly have prospective employers queuing up outside his dorm room slavering over a bachelors’ degree in Cryptid studies with a minor in Xenopsychology. He knew going in that he was looking at grad school no matter what, but that was before he nearly maxed out his student debt just getting through undergrad.

He has long talks about it with his dad, with Scott, and surprisingly with Allison who is the most useful of all because it turns out her family pretty much dragged the field of Xenoscience kicking and screaming out of the dark ages.

If Stiles had known that Scott was dating the future matriarch of the Argent family then he probably would have begged an invitation sooner –or maybe not, considering the Argents originally made their name as werewolf hunters before the Cryptid Rights movement back in the sixties. Still, she knows where to find funding and how to polish an application up to a glossy shine.

He’s just finished up his last application, mailed it off, and is literally sitting in a cafe biting his nails when Cadeus strolls back into his life –and he literally _strolls_ right up to Stiles’ table, sits down, then orders coffee.

“…and a refill for my friend, please.” He says to the waitress with a charming blunt-toothed smile.

“Your Alpha will straight up murder you, Cade.” Stiles tells him as soon as they are alone. “Or me. Possibly both of us.”

“Not my Alpha anymore.” Cadeus responds with a tight smile, which… _fuck_. Of all the people Stiles know, Cadeus is the last one he would have predicted to turn Omega. “So he has no say in what I do or do not do in my spare time.”

See, Stiles would turn him away except he actually likes Cadeus and has known him long enough to know that Cadeus in the name he took after getting the Bite in law school and that he doesn’t hire wolf-hookers for fun. He is highly dominant for a Beta, but lacks the chops to be a full Alpha in the big city. He could conceivably retire out into the midwest where the packs are smaller and family oriented, but he thrives in the corporate law environment so he’s _stuck_.

“I’m sorry, man.” Stiles tell him with perfect truth. “I thought for sure the new Hale could help you.”

“He was good for my wolf, but not so healthy for my human.” Cadeus bumps a companionable knee up against Stiles’. “I don’t suppose you’re free this evening?”

…and that’s how Stiles gets back into the game.

Like before, Cadeus is the first and where he leads others follow. Stiles enters grad school with a good scholarship and a little black book full of loyal clients –many of whom are former Hale wolves. He makes a down payment on a condo and invites Scott to move in. He gets Allison as an added bonus when she graduates. She ends up working part-time for him as an occasional consultant when he runs into documents in the old ciphers that Hunter families used to encode their bestiaries and other lore. He’d offer her better, but the Argent name is charged in supernatural circles.

Besides, she doesn’t know about his side business and he really wants to keep it that way.

Mahesvari was correct when she told him that sex is a rare outlet. Stiles rarely has more than one or two sex clients, but there’s usually enough somebodies that he never quite loses the reputation he has in some circles. It’s not enough for anyone to be able to arrest him although he’s had to deal with his fair share of hotshot detectives whose careers have ended up in the deadest dead-end of all that is the Cryptid Crimes Investigation Department. Cadeus defends him pro-bono whenever someone tries to make a sex trafficking charge stick. Stiles can’t tell if it’s self-interest or righteous indignation over Cryptid Rights that motivates him, but he’s grateful for the help.

Technically the laws in question were originally pushed through by Vampires to protect their blood thralls, but the language still covers people like him. It doesn’t stop his office from being one of the first stops on the CCID’s list whenever a wolf goes AWOL. Sometimes he can help. Most other times he can’t.

If he’s lucky then it’s Detective Mahealani calling his office line to make an appointment. If he’s not then it’s Detective Whittemore beating his door down at three in the morning.

Today he’s lucky and Danny is the one who slides into the chair across from him in Stiles’ favorite off-campus coffeeshop.

“What can you tell me about the Hale Alpha without endangering confidentiality?” He asks straight off, which is why Danny will always be Stiles’ favorite; he pretends that part-time hookers can claim client confidentiality and actually respects it. Jackson would have slammed his head into the table by now.

“He’s a hothead.” Stiles says around a bite of scone. “Serious about being a good alpha without the slightest clue about how to do it. He’s made decent in-roads towards cleaning up Hale territory after taking it from Peter, but lost most of his best wolves doing it. Honors his debts and doesn’t hold grudges. Has a fantastic ass and a penchant for tight jeans.”

“You ever do work for him?” Danny asks like he doesn’t have access to the legal records of Stiles’ run in with the new Alpha.

“Nope.” Stiles does actually know how to talk to cops having been raised by one and that the key to not incriminating yourself is to not volunteer information. Danny doesn’t seem to take it personally, but his next question makes it clear that he’s not here to trick Stiles into incriminating himself.

“Do you know of anyone who’s seen him in the last forty-eight hours?” He looks serious and actually kind of pale with dark smudges under his eyes like thumbprints.

“Nah.” Stiles shrugs. “Most of my clients jumped the Hale ship months ago. He blacklisted me with his pack after I sicced the law on him. Why? Is he missing?”

“No one’s reported him so.” Danny pinches the bridge of his nose. “…but no one’s heard from him since sometime last week either. Keep your ear to the ground, would ya? No one likes Hale, but I don’t want to see who slinks into the power vacuum he’d leave behind either.”

Stiles suppresses a shudder. Nobody wants that.

 

* * *

 

So… it’s not that Stiles likes Hale. Danny wasn’t kidding. No one _likes_ Hale.

He certainly doesn’t, but he doesn’t really know Derek well enough to _dislike_ him either aside from the whole ‘throwing him out of Halestorm’ thing. He respects the man’s intentions, but not the man himself… not yet.

The thing is that Stiles _does_ think that Derek’s got the makings of a good Alpha in him somewhere and was kind of counting on him to get his act together because there really aren’t a lot of good Alphas left. There are powerful ones and stable ones, but they aren’t necessarily _good_.

Scott is the only wolf Stiles knows with better control than Derek and Derek doesn’t have 24/7 access to his anchor the way Allison makes herself available to Scott.

Scott would make a good Alpha if he could become one spontaneously without resorting to murder and then only bite the people he already has an emotional investment in. The qualities that would make him a great Alpha make him the world’s _shittiest_ Beta. At one point or another he’s been run out of every pack in the city with the exception of Hale pack and he’s never applied for entry there. He either gets into it with the Alpha or throws down with someone else he shouldn’t. He’s basically incapable of faking submission so he stays an Omega and seems bizarrely happy that way.

Since taking over Hale pack Derek’s kept himself fairly visible. He holds an evening court in the VIP loft of his family’s other club, Raising Hale, which overlooks the entire dance floor and makes him visible to every last person inside. It’s a total cliché, but if the vampires can get away with it then so can he. During the day he can usually be found in a series of gutted out warehouses throwing his Betas around in the name of ‘training’.

Stiles skips all the ‘usual’ places because they’re probably crawling with plainclothes officers and snitches. No one likes Hale, but they like disappearing Alphas even less. Stiles does not want to be the guy asking weird questions in that neighborhood right now.

Instead he gets in his Jeep and drives to a part of town that hugs the swell of an old river that doesn’t always exist except during certain parts of the year. It’s the harvest season so the air is heavy and wet with the scent of river weeds as he turns into the _Yerbería_ district. That he’s able to find it is a good sign. Stiles works with werewolves, but he personally has more in common with witches.

(No one has anything in common with the druids except other druids, but they don’t come into town unless they’re emissaries and even other druids think the emissaries are off their collective rocker.)

There’s a Bruja who Stiles works with on occasion as part of his thesis research. She’s no more trustworthy than any other herb worker, but she’s hard to offend and that’s the important part. Estelle doesn’t ask why he wants a dowsing charm. Odds are good that she doesn’t care.

Stiles is not a witch. Being a witch isn’t something you’re born with. It’s something you bargain for. _Druids_ are born, but when and to whom is anyone’s guess. They certainly aren’t talking. Stiles has a different ability, which is probably less useful.

He walks out into the parking lot with a little inverted brass tear drop on a chain. He loops the chain around his finger and closes his eyes.

Derek Hale is a hard man to forget. Stiles pulls on the memory of the way he felt looking at Derek’s stupid grungy shirt, the faint scent of his musky cologne, of his eyes and his presence and his voice and the tingling creep of nerves up Stiles’ spine when they locked gazes.

When he opens his eyes the pendulum is straining on its chain pointing south-southwest like it would fly off in search of its target if only Stiles would let it go.

(This is what Stiles can do.)

Stiles gets in his Jeep and drives. The pendulum trembles on its chain and hovers over his dash like the needle of a compass in a world where Derek Hale is true north (and maybe it is.) The pendulum guides him to the old Cotton Gin.

The Cotton Gin is equal parts historic neighborhood and creepy slum. It was a center of industry in the 1900s, but industry got pushed out from the urban center as progress continued its inexorable march onwards. For one reason or another the factory, attached worker housing, and the big creepy Victorian mansion adjacent to it were never repurposed or demolished and instead sit in the middle of the city with broken windows like pecked-out eyes. The complex of buildings sprawl across several city blocks and in its time has been home to runaway teenagers, drug dealers, winos, and other assorted vagrants.

Stiles parks his car somewhere well-lit with CCTV, locks it, and hopes for the best as he goes in on foot.

It’s quiet in the Gin as he creeps inside. The locks on the doors were broken ages ago and stopped being replaced long before Stiles came along. The main entrance (a large barn-like double gate) is standing open when he gets there and good thing too. The wood is thicker than his chest is deep and Stiles very much doubts he’d have been able to push it open on his own.

He isn’t particularly surprised to see Neo-Hunter graffiti on the wall immediately opposite the entrance. Much the Neo-Nazis and Skinheads, the Neo-Hunters are a group of asshole teenagers for the most part with a lot of hate and very little understanding of the history of the group whose mantle they’ve appropriated beyond their own mangled rhetoric. More importantly, none of them seem to be around right now.

Stiles is 87% sure that Derek’s still alive. For one thing, none of his top betas have popped up with red eyes and if someone had challenged him then you can bet that they’d be up on the rooftops crowing about their win. Derek’s been challenged some twelve times since taking down his uncle and in every case the challenger went home in a body bag.


	14. Gotta Catch 'Em All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek finds out that Scott’s spastic little friend keeps free range Pokémon by complete fucking accident.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rescued from the jaws of Microsoft's document recovery!

Derek finds out that Scott’s spastic little friend keeps free range Pokémon by complete fucking accident when he’s on the run from the cops and ends up having to hide from them in the Sheriff’s own house.

He lets himself in the backdoor using his claws for lock picks and sneaks up into Stiles’ bedroom because that’s the one place he can’t imagine the Sheriff going uninvited ---turns out that IS true, but not for the reasons Derek would have guessed. Considering what little he knows of Stilinski’s kid he’s expecting porn sitting out in plain view, a bunch of used tissues, and probably a stash of weed somewhere. Actually the place is pretty clean and smells safe –until he gets two steps in past the door and is jumped by an Emolga.

Dae, his Exadrill and the only member of his team that the flying lightning-rat won’t paralyze, still has the little shit pinned when Stiles gets back. He tried to let it up a few times, but it went for his face whenever it thought it had a shot by bypassing Dae altogether. That bravado evaporates as soon as Stiles is in sight however and it chitters pitifully from underneath Dae’s paw.

It’s touch and go for a moment and Derek thinks that maybe, just maybe, he’d read the kid wrong when he thought he could use fear to keep Stiles in line. As it turns out fear is a lousy tactic to try on Stiles. It works for a little while until he rebels just to be a dick. Peter learns that the hard way and Derek never really _does_ find out why Stiles found him worthy of help.

The Emolga never forgives him though. She clings to the top of her trainer’s head whenever Derek is around and gives off enough radiant static to make Stiles’ hair stand on end, which just gets funnier as he grows it out.

Through accident or happenstance, Derek becomes familiar with nearly all of Stiles’ pets. They are none of them trained fighters, which is a shame. Sometimes Derek looks at the sleek Vulpix who rides shotgun in the Jeep no matter who else is in the car and gets an old itch that dates back to the days when his family ran the Daycare Center for Beacon Hills. He misses training, but Team Argent did more than murder his family. They had every surviving Hale banned from the League. Derek’s prohibited from legally purchasing poke balls and he wouldn’t risk the health of any wild pokémon by using a black market ball. So his team is limited to his family’s pokémon who survived the fire and the one wild one he’d been able to befriend as a kid.

They stay inside their balls. Not all of them will obey Derek, but they won’t leave either. Like him they have nowhere else to go. The ones who do come out for him –he can’t always bear to look at.

Stiles, on the other hand, lives at the heart of what is going to end up as a zoo if someone doesn’t haul him back from that precarious edge. The Emolga and the Vulpix are just his most visible pets. There’s a Growlith who technically belongs to Stiles but follows the Sherriff around like a fire-breathing shadow instead, two tiny Pichus hatched from the same egg who have a little nursery in the kitchen, a Snorlax in the backyard who has literally never moved in all the time Derek’s known it, a Parichisu that stares at Derek whenever he’s around, and what is probably every abandoned Magikarp on the continent. Derek has no idea what will happen if Stiles ever gets one to evolve; the apocalypse probably.

 


	15. Crossing the Acheron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If pressed, Derek would admit that he actually does have a list of things that he needs in life; new tires for his car, a weekend somewhere with no cell reception and a stack of Dan Brown novels, a gym within two blocks of his apartment…
> 
> The point is that a horse farm is nowhere on that list, but thirty acres of pasturage and riding trails in Kentucky is exactly what he’s got. That and Laura breathing down his neck to get their dearly deceased Uncle’s affairs in order before any more of his skeletons spontaneously fall out of the closet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's an A/B/O fic. I know it's an A/B/O fic. I'm sorry! I couldn't help it!

If pressed, Derek would admit that he actually does have a list of things that he needs in life; new tires for his car, a weekend somewhere with no cell reception and a stack of Dan Brown novels, a gym within two blocks of his apartment…

The point is that a horse farm is nowhere on that list, but thirty acres of pasturage and riding trails in Kentucky is exactly what he’s got. That and Laura breathing down his neck to get their dearly deceased Uncle’s affairs in order before any more of his skeletons spontaneously fall out of the closet. The farm… ranch… whatever reverted to the pack after Peter’s death, which means someone has to go through it all to inventory it for the lawyers. That’s a job for an Alpha and Laura has her hands full with the pack in New York so the work falls to Derek.

Derek doesn’t much like being this far from his pack and people in the South are insane, but the land itself isn’t too bad. He knows nothing about horses, but there’s a part-timer that seems to have the day-to-day shit covered. They haven’t really spoken yet. Derek got in late on Monday and the kid was nowhere to be seen the next day. By that point Derek was occupied in the main house and hasn’t made time to go out to the barn again. The horses look happy and get rotated from barn to field to whatever on a schedule that looks deliberate so Derek stays out of the way.

That isn’t to say he’s completely _free_ of horses. There’s an entire bookshelf of breeding records he’s yet to touch in the downstairs office, but those seem low priority for the moment. Derek’s still elbow-deep in Peter’s financial ledgers, which inspire their own special kind of headache.

Peter kept good records. He was a responsible and methodical man once with gentle humor and kindness to soften the edges of his Machiavellian intellect. The Fire changed all that. The Fire changed a _lot_ of things. Everyone in the Hale pack lost something that night, but Peter came away from it as someone else. Everything soft about him was stripped away leaving only anger, ambition, and sadism. He wasn’t strong, he never had been, but he was very good at skirting the edge of what Laura could punish him for without weakening her position as Alpha Prime. Eventually she had to send him away using some flimsy excuse about establishing new pack lands away from the city with a cash bribe to make him go quietly.

To all appearances, that’s exactly what he did. On the surface everything Derek has found paints Peter as a lonely middle-aged Beta with conservative tastes and a passion for horse breeding …if you ignore the bodies buried along the property line to the west in a pasture where the horses never graze. Derek’s fairly sure there’s another bricked into one of the basement walls, but he doesn’t understand construction well enough to break in there safely enough to find out for sure.

He’s considered calling the cops, but the local LEOs made it clear when he filed Peter’s death certificate with the county clerk that the farm is Pack land and as such a sovereign territory insofar as they’re concerned. It’s not the first time he’s arrived in a town to find his welcome already worn out, but in retrospect he thinks they had some idea of what he was going to find which means they probably knew what Peter was doing and just let him do it. _Assholes_.

The actual bodies will have to wait until he can get an exhumation order from Laura, but in the meantime Peter’s ledgers will tell him where the figurative ones are buried.

That is how moonrise (waxing crescent nearly third quarter) finds Derek bend over an old school ledger with dust in his hair, a long smudge of it across his forehead, and no idea that he’s being watched.

Derek wakes up face-first in that damn book with a crick in his back and a powerful need for caffeine. He stumbles into the kitchen, skips past Peter’s space-age espresso machine, and goes straight for the french press that arrived with him in his luggage. It doesn’t make normal drip coffee, but he doesn’t have to program it either. Breakfast is Bulletproof Coffee and a mess of eggs because Laura isn’t around to make gagging noises at him for blending butter into his coffee. He takes his food out to the patio where the chilly morning air can wake him up some.

There’s mist clinging to the grass still as the sun crests over the horizon, but Derek can see motion in the direction of the barn where the part-timer kid is already hard at work. It occurs to Derek that Peter probably had a funny idea of what constitutes ‘part-time’ and that whatever the kid’s being paid right now isn’t enough considering the farm’s been running like clockwork in Peter’s absence.

That’s always assuming that the kid wasn’t complicit in whatever the hell Peter was doing here, but Derek doesn’t think so. There’s no trace of anyone in the house other than Peter and Derek’s already found Peter’s killing grounds. No sign of anyone except Peter there either. Derek’s nose is forensic quality –always assuming they’d ever let him near criminology lab. The kid would have been more use to Peter as an ignorant character witness.

The old stallion in the field nearest the house ignores Derek as he crosses the lawn on approach to the barn. Actually all the horses seem largely indifferent to his presence, which is rare in an herbivore and probably comes of having been reared by a werewolf. Even a Beta is enough to give any prey animal the fidgets. An Alpha should have had them stampeding in the other direction.

No sign of the kid when he sticks his head in the barn, but he can hear tired footsteps in the distance and circles the building to find the kid forking hay into a wheelbarrow. He’s thin with hair buzzed down short and a big schlumpy gray sweater on over a pair of jeans and battered leather boots.

At a distance Derek had placed the kid’s age at sixteen or seventeen. Up close he’s still got a baby-face, but his shoulders and broad hands say early twenties instead of late teens. He also has the curious absence of identity pheromones that marks a non-natured, which discomfits Derek even though he doesn’t let it through to the surface. Derek’s an Alpha in both rank and gender. He’s familiar with Betas and other Alphas. He’s even encountered a few Omegas under strictly controlled circumstances, but he’s never met anyone without any gender at all. Non-natured people tend to stick together in small closed communities. A lot of them join religious orders. Even more of them end up as vagrants.

It explains why Peter hired him anyway. The kid would have had a hard time finding work anywhere around here. Peter liked it when people came to him with no other options.

The kid looks bone-tired too with dark smudges under his eyes and a dull quality to his expression that suggests he hasn’t eaten yet, but he’s moving hay like it kicked his dog and owes him money which it might very well. Derek has no idea when the kid last got paid or what he even makes.

 _Shit_ , he’s fucking up already.

“Hey.” Is what Derek says instead of ‘stop that’ or ‘put the pitchfork down’ or ‘show me what to do and I’ll do it’. “ _Hey_.” He says again when the kid ignores him. He catches the shaft of the kid’s pitchfork and forces him to still. “I’m not here to hurt you.” It bears saying although Derek knows full well that he’s not that convincing. “What’s your name?”

The kid watches him with wary eyes and pursed lips for a long moment. Then he lets go of the pitchfork and signs something at him that makes Derek’s stomach swoop. He doesn’t know ASL, but he knows enough to recognize it.

“I don’t…” Derek bites back the first couple of things he wants to say because they all sound bad even to him. “Can you hear?” He points at his ear just in case the kid can’t read lips. _Please_ , let him be able to read lips otherwise they are both so, so _very_ fucked. To his surprise the kid nods and pulls down the collar of his fugly sweater so that the side of his throat is visible. What he sees there makes Derek almost wish he really was dealing with Peter’s disabled hireling.

There’s a utilitarian tattoo there on the pale column of the kid’s trachea that outlines a set of surgical scars. It lists a serial number and several notes in veterinarian’s shorthand, which like ASL Derek can’t read but knows enough to recognize it when he sees it. The kid releases his collar and it springs back up to cover what amounts to the place where Peter apparently had him _legally mutilated_. He digs in his pockets and comes up with a battered little memo pad and pencil nubbin. He writes with the pad balanced on his thigh before holding it up for Derek to read.

‘I’m Stiles.’ It says. ‘Did you kill him?’

“Yeah.” Derek replies hoarsely and seriously considers finding a way to raise Peter from the dead so he can do it again a few times. Officially, they’re calling Peter’s death a tragic accident if anyone asks even though no one aside from Stiles actually has yet and they probably won’t. It comes across better than saying a grotesque Alpha attempted to ambush Laura on a night when Derek happened to be on bodyguard duty and they hadn’t even known it was their uncle until his body shifted back to human post-mortem. Derek never wanted to be an Alpha and had never even really entertained the possibility until suddenly he was one.

The kid eyes him, searching his face for… something. Either he finds it or he doesn’t, Derek can’t say. He flips the memo pad over to a new page and writes a new note. His expression is flat as he hands the pad over to Derek.

‘I’m due in May. I need to see a doctor.’

Derek frowns, trying to make the letter make sense. “Due for what?” His gaze switches back and forth between Stiles and the memo pad until the kid sighs, a vast put-upon sound, and smoothes the front of his sweater down over his front to reveal the gentle curve of his mid-to-late stage pregnancy.

It’s something Derek suspected from the moment he saw Stiles’ surgical scars. Non-natured people are difficult to employ, but still possess all the same liberty and bodily autonomy as any free citizen. The only type of person Peter could have had medically silenced in an accredited clinic –and it would _have_ to be accredited judging by the relative neatness of the scar tissue and the carefully tattooed serial number surrounding it- is an Omega.

A pregnant Omega whose endocrine system has produced enough fear hormones that his body has reacted by shutting down identity pheromone production in an attempt to hide him from the source of stress in his environment …or in other words; _Peter_.

A sudden crack rends the air and they jump back away from each other. Derek stares down at his hands and realizes he’s broken the pitchfork in half.

000

Stiles lives in a set of rooms over the barn the Derek might at a stretch _consider_ leaving a dog in. They’re clean and weather-tight with a small AC unit in the sleeping area, but smell overwhelmingly of horse and hay. The ‘kitchen’ is one of those all-in-one affairs that plugs into the wall and rolls around on wheels. It has one burner ring, a mini-stove that doesn’t work, and a tiny icebox with a lone half-tray of ice inside. Stiles apparently supplements it with a small rice-maker and a cooler that smells like it used to hold vegetables. There’s a just wrinkly potato and a bag of spindly haricot verts inside so Derek tables the laundry list of questions he has, puts Stiles into the Toyota, and heads for the nearest grocery store he can find hitting up a McDonald’s on the way.

If there’s a problem in the world that chicken nuggets can’t fix then at least it can be improved upon with the application of a happy meal. The kid rolls his eyes when Derek orders, but doesn’t indicate that he wants anything else.

“Eat that and we’ll get you something else later when you’re sure you can handle it.” Derek says as he hands the food over. “If you want something in particular, write it down for me.”

Stiles just nods and takes the food. He eats slowly and methodically, pausing between bites to breathe a little even though he’s clearly ravenous. That more than anything tells Derek how prepared Peter _didn’t_ leave him before fucking off to New York.

His hands tighten on the steering wheel, but he keeps his thoughts to himself.

In the store Stiles keeps himself to himself and Derek has to look for context clues rather than actual input to figure out what things the kid likes and wants. People passing them in the aisles give Stiles the long side-eye, which tells Derek they’ve seen him before and know at least something about him. It fits with the pattern of willful ignorance regarding Peter’s activities at the farm that Derek’s observed so far.

Whatever thoughts he’d entertained of keeping the property for its original purpose are evaporating. Integrating even the most stable and gregarious werewolves he can find into this community would take decades, possibly even longer. As things stand now, these people would give his family up to the first hunter to come knocking for a pat on the head and Derek can’t even say it would be without cause. Their only personal interactions with a werewolf have been through Peter and that will color everything else they ever learn about his kind.

Stiles is casting covert looks at the restaurants clustered around the grocery store so Derek pulls into one so he can get the kid a small strawberry milkshake, which keeps him calm and occupied all the way back to the farm.

He wants to put the kid in one of main house’s guest rooms, but as an option that’s right out. The kid won’t even pretend to consider the idea and Derek’s not real happy about housing a young pregnant Omega in a house with bodies in the walls either. So he stays in the barn apartment while Derek drives out to the nearest Costco and comes back with without any illusions left that he’s in any control of his life left, but also most of what he needs to make the space actually habitable.

Stiles is happy to see the microwave at least. He celebrates by blowing the barn circuit breaker trying to make a hot-pocket.

000

Laura takes the news better than Derek expected, which is to say she doesn’t crawl through the phone lines to murder him. However that’s the only good part of that conversation because Laura’s the one who’s been dealing with Peter’s estate lawyers in New York and not one of them knew about Stiles either. They seem to be dealing with it by quietly and competently freaking the hell out because the presence of a potential bloodline heir to Peter’s estate complicates things. It helps that Derek is the clear choice to inherit custody of both Peter’s kid and Peter’s Omega by right of conquest which renders Peters will moot, but Peter’s will doesn’t discuss Stiles at in it all. It goes on for pages and pages about how his livestock should be handled, but no mention of his mate; where he came from, where his family is, _nothing_.

Neither Derek nor Laura have floated the idea of asking Stiles yet. Maybe once he’s been fed up and is comfortable enough to produce scent again _maybe_. It’s irrational, but no Alpha has ever been accused of being particularly sane when there’s a frightened Omega in their care.

“I’m sending Isaac, Eric, and Boyd out to support you.” Laura’s tone brooks no argument, but Derek bristles anyway. He knows those names and knows damn well that this is not going to be a temporary transfer.

“I don’t want your hard luck cases, Laura.” He growls. The only, _only_ bright light about this entire situation is that he has the opportunity to build his own pack from the foundation up. Erica has a persistent medical condition, Isaac vacillates wildly between being a mild-mannered pillar of the pack or a raging lunatic, and Boyd is a complete mystery who refuses to be cracked.

“No, Derek, you need Betas and you need them now.” Laura snaps. “You’ve been an Alpha for all of five minutes and now you’ve got a breeding Omega on your hands. The _only_ reason I sent you out on your own was because I knew you’d be isolated on the farm otherwise I would not have let you out of my sight. You’ll on the defensive right now even if you don’t feel like it. Once you’ve got that kid settled and comfortable you’re going to start wanting a support system in place, you won’t be able to help it, and if you don’t have one on hand then you’re going to go out and _make_ one. Isaac, Erica, and Boyd might be obnoxious little canker-sores, but they are known quantities. They will not disobey direct orders and they all have their transformations under control. You could do worse and I can’t spare anyone else.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Acheron is one of the five rivers of Hades, the river of woe. According to Virgil it's the river Charon ferries souls across. However, according to the Suda (which is this huuuge 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia of the Mediterranean world) it was "a place of healing, not a place of punishment, cleansing and purging the sins of humans." Seemed appropriate for the somewhat dark tone of the story.


End file.
